tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post1816993818124592276..comments2024-03-29T01:19:46.849-04:00Comments on Eco-Evo Evo-Eco: Evolution in small spaces: microgeographic adaptation and the spatial scale of evolutionBen Hallerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17875404974157070805noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-16161309001901464252015-03-16T01:31:15.724-04:002015-03-16T01:31:15.724-04:00Hi Jonathon,
I really enjoyed reading the article ...Hi Jonathon,<br />I really enjoyed reading the article and this post. Scale and "local" adaptation are both topics that I'm fascinated by and I really like the idea of a quantifiable threshold with which to define "microgeographic". I work in alpine systems, and I suspect that microgeographic adaptation is relatively common in these environments. I'd like to try estimating the "wright" for some of the species I've worked with up there! Thanks for the thought-provoking piece.Rachel Slatyerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06303650846158163551noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-4230117029869794842014-03-23T16:58:12.938-04:002014-03-23T16:58:12.938-04:00This is a really good question, given that the top...This is a really good question, given that the topic of spatial scale seems to be dominated by the 'sympatry' vs. 'allopatry' speciation debates. <br /><br />In our mind, the distinction between microgeographic and sympatry is fairly simple. 'Sympatry' is not tied to a quantitative scale, just a sometimes vague understanding that the ranges of species or ecotypes overlaps to some, unspecified, degree. 'Microgeographic', as we define it, is a quantitative threshold scaled to the dispersal ability of a species. <br /><br />More importantly, this microgeographic threshold (i.e., one Wright dispersal neighborhood) is the specific distance within which the role of neutral processes, such as drift, should play a minimal role in creating any divergence observed between populations. This is because of the high levels of gene flow expected at these scale. <br /><br />It seems that 'sympatry' is often (but not always) used to describe things living in the same space. In our evaluation of microgeographic adaptation, we are often referring to populations that are separate but located close to each other, relative to dispersal. Of course, in systems where populations (or demes or groups) of distinct ecotypes are less discrete and more interwoven on a landscape, classic sympatry may also be observed. If common garden and transplant experiments reveal adaptive divergence in such a system, this would represent sympatric divergence at the smallest end of the microgeographic scale, assuming non-zero dispersal. Colleagues have suggested that heterogeneous soil conditions can lead to these pattern in grasses and flowering herbaceous plants.<br /><br />Perhaps there are many more examples of systems that fit both the sympatric and microgeographic criteria. Or maybe they are exceedingly rare. We're hoping that the spatially scaled 'wright' measure of divergence will help us shed light on these interesting evolutionary patterns! <br /><br />Jonathan R.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15567153467987194419noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456348657596914237.post-68455878155350701092014-03-20T18:02:37.064-04:002014-03-20T18:02:37.064-04:00Thanks for this interesting post!
While reading ...Thanks for this interesting post! <br /><br />While reading the paper and in particular the list of mechanisms promoting microgeographic adaptation, I was wondering what differentiates a microgeographic scale from what is known as "sympatry"... Could you please comment on this?<br /><br />Otherwise, I thought it was a very good point to stress the fact that distance must be scaled with respect to dispersal abilities!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01869648433198778864noreply@blogger.com