Adaptive Radiation, Ecological Opportunity, and Evolutionary Determinism

By J. Losos. American Naturalist, 2010

613 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Adaptive radiation refers to diversification from an ancestral species that produces descendants adapted to use a great variety of distinct ecological niches. In this review, I examine two aspects of adaptive radiation: first, that it results from ecological opportunity and, second, that it is deterministic in terms of its outcome and evolutionary trajectory. Ecological opportunity is usually a prerequisite for adaptive radiation, although in some cases, radiation can occur in the absence of preexisting opportunity. Nonetheless, many clades fail to radiate although seemingly in the presence of ecological opportunity; until methods are developed to identify and quantify ecological opportunity, the concept will have little predictive utility in understanding a priori when a clade might be expected to radiate. Although predicted by theory, replicated adaptive radiations occur only rarely, usually in closely related and poorly dispersing taxa found in the same region on islands or in lakes. Contingencies of a variety of types may usually preclude close similarity in the outcome of evolutionary diversification in other situations. Whether radiations usually unfold in the same general sequence is unclear because of the unreliability of methods requiring phylogenetic reconstruction of ancestral events. The synthesis of ecological, phylogenetic, experimental, and genomic advances promises to make the coming years a golden age for the study of adaptive radiation; natural history data, however, will always be crucial to understanding the forces shaping adaptation and evolutionary diversification.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Genetics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21e95e026c115d61a3cbda91d2183590edb9daa0

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Citations in the corpus

The evolution of viviparity opens opportunities for lizard radiation but drives it into a climatic cul‐de‐sac (2013, background): “The evolution of adaptive innovations facilitates the radiation of organisms into previously unexploited selective environments, such as unoccupied areas or niche dimensions (Losos, 2010).”
Ecological Opportunity and Adaptive Radiation (2016, background): “Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press Losos JB. 2010.”
Contingency and determinism in evolution: Replaying life’s tape (2018, background): “…which convergence involves not just two (or more) lineages adapting to the same niche, but entire multispecies assemblages evolving similarly, such as evolutionary radiations of Caribbean lizards and Pacific Ocean snails on multiple islands, and frog and bird faunas on different continents ( 113 ).”
Under niche construction: an operational bridge between ecology, evolution, and ecosystem science (2014, background): “, 2009), 367 and no experimental tests about whether such effects can influence selection pressures so as 368 to either promote or constrain further evolutionary divergence (Losos, 2010; Yoder et al., 369 2010).”
Natural fragmentation in river networks as a driver of speciation for freshwater fishes (2013, background): “Conversely, lower genetic exchanges among populations of isolated habitats enhance diversification (Gavrilets and Losos 2009, Kisel and Barraclough 2010, but see Losos 2010), promoting higher speciation rates at evolutionary time scales.”
Ecological drivers of the Ediacaran-Cambrian diversification of Metazoa (2012, neutral): “A classic adaptive radiation reflects the exploitation of an ecological opportunity presented by underutilized resources (Losos 2010; Schluter 2000; Simpson 1953; Yoder et al. 2010).”
Gecko Adhesion as a Model System for Integrative Biology, Interdisciplinary Science, and Bioinspired Engineering (2014, background): “Third, in contrast to Anolis, Phelsuma does not necessarily show the same types of morphological correlates of niche partitioning, such as variation in limb proportions, tail length, and toe pad size (Losos 2010).”
Climate‐driven rampant speciation of the Cape flora (2011, background): “The dating and causes of rapid increases in species richness (radiations) have recently attracted much interest (Crisp et al., 2004; Linder, 2008; Givnish et al., 2009; Rundell & Price, 2009; Verboom et al., 2009; Losos, 2010; Valente et al., 2010).”
Phylogeography unplugged: comparative surveys in the genomic era (2014, background): “While evolutionary radiations can be inferred from temporal patterns of diversification (exemplified by “early bursts”), adaptive radiations are associated with ecological opportunity (Losos 2010), which is often revealed through selection on morphological traits.”