Ecological Pleiotropy Suppresses the Dynamic Feedback Generated by a Rapidly Changing Trait

Authors

• John DeLong, University of Nebraska–LincolnFollow

ORCID IDs

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-8213

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2-17-2017

Citation

Am. Nat. 2017. Vol. 189, pp. 592–597.

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0558-8213

Comments

2017 by The University of Chicago

Abstract

Population dynamics may carry a signature of an ecology- evolution-ecology feedback, known as eco-evolutionary dynamics, when functionally important traits change. Given current theory, the absence of a feedback from a trait with strong links to species interactions should not occur. In a previous study with the Didinium-Paramecium predator-prey system, however, rapid and large-magnitude changes in predator cell volume occurred without any noticeable effect on the population dynamics. Here I resolve this theory-data conflict by showing that ecological pleiotropy—when a trait has more than one functional effect on an ecological process—suppresses shifts in dynamics that would arise, given the links between cell volume and the species interaction. Whether eco-evolutionary dynamics arise, therefore, depends not just on the ecology-evolution feedback but on the net effect that a trait has on different parts of the underlying interaction.