Dynamics of Phenotypic Change and the Shrinking Sheep of St. Kilda

Environmental change, including climate change, can cause rapid phenotypic change via both ecological and evolutionary processes. Because ecological and evolutionary dynamics are intimately linked, a major challenge is to identify their relative roles. We exactly decomposed the change in mean body w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2009-07, Vol.325 (5939), p.464-467
Main Authors: Ozgul, Arpat, Tuljapurkar, Shripad, Benton, Tim G, Pemberton, Josephine M, Clutton-Brock, Tim H, Coulson, Tim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Biological
Age
Animal populations
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Biological Evolution
Body Size
Body Weight
Climate change
Ecological genetics
Ecology
Ecosystem
Environment
Evolution
Evolutionary biology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Genetic variation
Genetics of eukaryotes. Biological and molecular evolution
Lambs
Male
Models, Biological
Phenotype
Phenotypic traits
Physical growth
Population dynamics
Sheep
Sheep, Domestic - anatomy & histology
Sheep, Domestic - growth & development
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Summary:Environmental change, including climate change, can cause rapid phenotypic change via both ecological and evolutionary processes. Because ecological and evolutionary dynamics are intimately linked, a major challenge is to identify their relative roles. We exactly decomposed the change in mean body weight in a free-living population of Soay sheep into all the processes that contribute to change. Ecological processes contribute most, with selection--the underpinning of adaptive evolution--explaining little of the observed phenotypic trend. Our results enable us to explain why selection has so little effect even though weight is heritable, and why environmental change has caused a decline in the body size of Soay sheep.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1173668