139
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Evolutionary principles and their practical application

      research-article

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Evolutionary principles are now routinely incorporated into medicine and agriculture. Examples include the design of treatments that slow the evolution of resistance by weeds, pests, and pathogens, and the design of breeding programs that maximize crop yield or quality. Evolutionary principles are also increasingly incorporated into conservation biology, natural resource management, and environmental science. Examples include the protection of small and isolated populations from inbreeding depression, the identification of key traits involved in adaptation to climate change, the design of harvesting regimes that minimize unwanted life-history evolution, and the setting of conservation priorities based on populations, species, or communities that harbor the greatest evolutionary diversity and potential. The adoption of evolutionary principles has proceeded somewhat independently in these different fields, even though the underlying fundamental concepts are the same. We explore these fundamental concepts under four main themes: variation, selection, connectivity, and eco-evolutionary dynamics. Within each theme, we present several key evolutionary principles and illustrate their use in addressing applied problems. We hope that the resulting primer of evolutionary concepts and their practical utility helps to advance a unified multidisciplinary field of applied evolutionary biology.

          Related collections

          Most cited references254

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Article: not found

          Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Climate change affects marine fishes through the oxygen limitation of thermal tolerance.

            A cause-and-effect understanding of climate influences on ecosystems requires evaluation of thermal limits of member species and of their ability to cope with changing temperatures. Laboratory data available for marine fish and invertebrates from various climatic regions led to the hypothesis that, as a unifying principle, a mismatch between the demand for oxygen and the capacity of oxygen supply to tissues is the first mechanism to restrict whole-animal tolerance to thermal extremes. We show in the eelpout, Zoarces viviparus, a bioindicator fish species for environmental monitoring from North and Baltic Seas (Helcom), that thermally limited oxygen delivery closely matches environmental temperatures beyond which growth performance and abundance decrease. Decrements in aerobic performance in warming seas will thus be the first process to cause extinction or relocation to cooler waters.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Widespread parallel evolution in sticklebacks by repeated fixation of Ectodysplasin alleles.

              Major phenotypic changes evolve in parallel in nature by molecular mechanisms that are largely unknown. Here, we use positional cloning methods to identify the major chromosome locus controlling armor plate patterning in wild threespine sticklebacks. Mapping, sequencing, and transgenic studies show that the Ectodysplasin (EDA) signaling pathway plays a key role in evolutionary change in natural populations and that parallel evolution of stickleback low-plated phenotypes at most freshwater locations around the world has occurred by repeated selection of Eda alleles derived from an ancestral low-plated haplotype that first appeared more than two million years ago. Members of this clade of low-plated alleles are present at low frequencies in marine fish, which suggests that standing genetic variation can provide a molecular basis for rapid, parallel evolution of dramatic phenotypic change in nature.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Evol Appl
                Evol Appl
                eva
                Evolutionary Applications
                Blackwell Publishing Ltd (Oxford, UK )
                1752-4571
                1752-4571
                March 2011
                : 4
                : 2
                : 159-183
                Affiliations
                [1 ]simpleRedpath Museum and Department of Biology, McGill University Montreal, QC, Canada
                [2 ]simpleSchool of Biology and Ecology, University of Maine Orono, ME, USA
                [3 ]simpleDepartment of Biology, University of Bergen Bergen, Norway
                [4 ]simpleInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Laxenburg, Austria
                [5 ]simpleDepartments of Mathematics and Statistics and Biology, Queen's University Kingston, ON, Canada
                [6 ]simpleCenter for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment, University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA
                [7 ]simpleDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA
                [8 ]simpleCSIRO Entomology and Cotton Catchment Communities CRC, Long Pocket Laboratories Indooroopilly, Qld, Australia
                [9 ]simpleDepartment of Biology, University of Washington Seattle, WA, USA
                [10 ]simpleCSIRO Entomology, Black Mountain Canberra, ACT, Australia
                [11 ]simpleCenter for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark
                [12 ]simpleSchool of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland Brisbane, Qld, Australia
                [13 ]simpleDivision of Environmental Biology, National Science Foundation Arlington, VA, USA
                [14 ]simpleCSIRO Plant Industry Canberra, ACT, Australia
                [15 ]simpleDepartment of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California Davis, CA, USA
                [16 ]simpleSection of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, CA, USA
                [17 ]simpleEcology Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota Saint Paul, MN, USA
                [18 ]simpleInstitute for Contemporary Evolution Davis, CA, USA
                [19 ]simpleDepartment of Entomology, University of California Davis, CA, USA
                [20 ]simpleInstitute of Marine Research Bergen, Norway
                Author notes
                Andrew P. Hendry, Redpath Museum, McGill University, 859 Sherbooke St. W., Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2K6. Tel.: 514 398 4086 Ext. 00880; fax: 514 398 3185; e-mail: andrew.hendry@ 123456mcgill.ca
                Article
                10.1111/j.1752-4571.2010.00165.x
                3352551
                25567966
                ccb72799-9745-4b3b-81ef-934812f0cb20
                © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
                History
                : 16 September 2010
                : 20 September 2010
                Categories
                Synthesis

                Evolutionary Biology
                forest management,agriculture,contemporary evolution,conservation biology,climate change,fisheries management,evolutionary medicine,adaptation

                Comments

                Comment on this article