©Sandra Bouwhuis
Adaptation: micro-evolutionary and plastic responses to rapid environmental changes
Understanding the rate at which adaptation occurs is crucial for predicting the viability of natural populations. If the rate of adaptation is too slow to track environmental changes, populations might suffer dramatic consequences. Adaptation to a changing or novel environment may occur via micro-evolution where genotypes that have a higher fitness increase in frequency in the population, and/or via phenotypic plasticity where a genotype expresses a different phenotype under different environmental conditions. While plasticity is often studied as an adaptive response to climate (and global) change, micro-evolution is rarely tested, specially in wild populations.
My current primary research focuses on studying how rapidly changing environmental conditions influence adaptive responses in a wild population of common terns. My main trait of interest is phenology (i.e., arrival date from overwintering grounds and egg laying date), and I am interested in quantifying patterns of additive genetic variance and strength of annual selection (Moiron et al., 2020 Am Nat, Moiron et al., 2022 Evolution), individual and genetic plasticity in response to environmental conditions (Moiron et al., 2022 OSF preprint), and expected micro-evolutionary response to selection across environmental conditions (Moiron et al., 2023 Evolution Letters).
My current primary research focuses on studying how rapidly changing environmental conditions influence adaptive responses in a wild population of common terns. My main trait of interest is phenology (i.e., arrival date from overwintering grounds and egg laying date), and I am interested in quantifying patterns of additive genetic variance and strength of annual selection (Moiron et al., 2020 Am Nat, Moiron et al., 2022 Evolution), individual and genetic plasticity in response to environmental conditions (Moiron et al., 2022 OSF preprint), and expected micro-evolutionary response to selection across environmental conditions (Moiron et al., 2023 Evolution Letters).