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Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes

BACKGROUND: Mixed dispersal syndromes have historically been regarded as a bet-hedging mechanism that enhances survivorship in unpredictable environments, ensuring that some propagules stay in the maternal environment while others can potentially colonize new sites. However, this entails paying the...

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Autores principales: Hidalgo, Jorge, Casas, Rafael Rubio de, Á.Muñoz, Miguel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820946/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27044655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0638-8
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author Hidalgo, Jorge
Casas, Rafael Rubio de
Á.Muñoz, Miguel
author_facet Hidalgo, Jorge
Casas, Rafael Rubio de
Á.Muñoz, Miguel
author_sort Hidalgo, Jorge
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Mixed dispersal syndromes have historically been regarded as a bet-hedging mechanism that enhances survivorship in unpredictable environments, ensuring that some propagules stay in the maternal environment while others can potentially colonize new sites. However, this entails paying the costs of both dispersal and non-dispersal. Propagules that disperse are likely to encounter unfavorable conditions, while non-dispersing propagules might form inbred populations of close relatives. Here, we investigate the conditions under which mixed dispersal syndromes emerge and are evolutionarily stable, taking into account the risks of both environmental unpredictability and inbreeding. RESULTS: Using mathematical and computational modeling, we show that high dispersal propensity is favored whenever environmental unpredictability is low and inbreeding depression high, whereas mixed dispersal syndromes are adaptive under high environmental unpredictability, more particularly if inbreeding depression is small. Although pure dispersal is frequently adaptive, mixed dispersal represents the optimal strategy under many different parameterizations of our models, indicating that this strategy is likely to be favored in a wide variety of contexts. Furthermore, monomorphic populations go inevitably extinct when environmental and genetic costs are high, whilst mixed strategies can maintain viable populations even under very extreme conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Our models support the hypothesis that the interplay between inbreeding depression and environmental unpredictability shapes dispersal syndromes, often resulting in mixed strategies. Moreover, mixed dispersal seems to facilitate persistence whenever conditions are critical or nearly critical for survival. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0638-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-48209462016-04-06 Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes Hidalgo, Jorge Casas, Rafael Rubio de Á.Muñoz, Miguel BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Mixed dispersal syndromes have historically been regarded as a bet-hedging mechanism that enhances survivorship in unpredictable environments, ensuring that some propagules stay in the maternal environment while others can potentially colonize new sites. However, this entails paying the costs of both dispersal and non-dispersal. Propagules that disperse are likely to encounter unfavorable conditions, while non-dispersing propagules might form inbred populations of close relatives. Here, we investigate the conditions under which mixed dispersal syndromes emerge and are evolutionarily stable, taking into account the risks of both environmental unpredictability and inbreeding. RESULTS: Using mathematical and computational modeling, we show that high dispersal propensity is favored whenever environmental unpredictability is low and inbreeding depression high, whereas mixed dispersal syndromes are adaptive under high environmental unpredictability, more particularly if inbreeding depression is small. Although pure dispersal is frequently adaptive, mixed dispersal represents the optimal strategy under many different parameterizations of our models, indicating that this strategy is likely to be favored in a wide variety of contexts. Furthermore, monomorphic populations go inevitably extinct when environmental and genetic costs are high, whilst mixed strategies can maintain viable populations even under very extreme conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Our models support the hypothesis that the interplay between inbreeding depression and environmental unpredictability shapes dispersal syndromes, often resulting in mixed strategies. Moreover, mixed dispersal seems to facilitate persistence whenever conditions are critical or nearly critical for survival. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0638-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-04-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4820946/ /pubmed/27044655 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0638-8 Text en © Hidalgo et al. 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Hidalgo, Jorge
Casas, Rafael Rubio de
Á.Muñoz, Miguel
Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes
title Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes
title_full Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes
title_fullStr Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes
title_full_unstemmed Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes
title_short Environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes
title_sort environmental unpredictability and inbreeding depression select for mixed dispersal syndromes
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820946/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27044655
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0638-8
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