RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Increasing mutation rate of local adaptation during range expansion
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 008979
DO 10.1101/008979
A1 Marleen M. P. Cobben
A1 Alexander Kubisch
YR 2014
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/11/28/008979.abstract
AB Increasing dispersal under range expansion increases invasion speed, which implies that a species needs to adapt more rapidly to newly experienced local conditions. However, due to iterated founder effects, local genetic diversity under range expansion is low. Evolvability (mutation rate of local adaptation) has been reported to possibly be an adaptive trait itself. Thus, we expect that increased dispersal during range expansion may raise the mutation rate of local adaptation, thus increasing the survival of expanding populations. We have investigated this hypothesis with an individual-based metapopulation model. Our results show that mutation rate increases with increased dispersal rate under spatial variation experienced during range expansion, allowing a larger species range. In addition, we show that different spatial phenomena associated with range expansion, in this case spatial sorting / kin selection and priority effects, can enforce each other. These results contribute new insights into the particular genetic properties of spatial disequilibrium.