Mechanisms of rapid evolution

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding rapid evolution, emphasizing ecological feedback, population dynamics, and horizontal gene transfer, highlighting the paradigm shift towards integrating ecological and evolutionary processes.

Contribution

It introduces a new perspective on rapid evolution through ecological-evolutionary feedback and discusses simplified examples illustrating these mechanisms.

Findings

Population anomalies reflect strong selection and mutation interplay.

Ecological structure can be influenced by horizontal gene transfer.

Highlights challenges in fully understanding rapid evolution.

Abstract

The purpose of this roadmap article is to draw attention to a paradigm shift in our understanding of evolution towards a perspective of ecological-evolutionary feedback, highlighted through two recent highly simplified examples of rapid evolution. The first example focuses primarily on population dynamics: anomalies in population cycles can reflect the influence of strong selection and the interplay with mutations. The second focuses primarily on the way in which ecological structure can potentially be influenced by what is arguably the most powerful source of genetic novelty: horizontal gene transfer. We review the status of rapid evolution and also enumerate the current and future challenges of achieving a full understanding of rapid evolution in all its manifestations.