Abstract:
Examples of rapid evolutionary change now abound in increasing numbers of organisms. These examples are regularly associated with novel environments, and so it is not surprising that biological invasions are particularly good models for investigating population level processes. The guttural toad, Sclerophrys gutturalis, inhabits a large swathe of eastern and southern Africa, but has been deliberately introduced to the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Reunion some 100 years ago. More recently, another population was introduced to a suburban area of Cape Town ~25 years ago. All invasive populations have been found to originate from a single source near the port city of Durban. These populations have been the subject of numerous investigations that are the subject of this presentation. We show examples of rapid evolutionary change in behaviour, morphology, physiology, performance, microbiome, development and immunology, including the youngest invasive populations. The consequences of these changes have meant that we need to rethink our approach to calculating the potential distributions of invasive species beyond global climate matching to mechanistic modelling. We show this using another anuran model, the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis. Insights from studies on rapid evolutionary change benefit populations with repeated invasions to test whether there are underlying fitness trajectories that can be predicted for more invasive species. However, the hunt is now on to investigate the underlying causal mechanisms that facilitate these rapid adaptive responses. Opportunities to use invasive species as models are growing daily.
Speaker: Dr. John Measey
Affiliation: Yunnan University
Time: 4:30 PM, Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023
Venue: Tencent Meeting ID：949-629-371
https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/ZquWga8SvSyP
