TY - JOUR
T1 - Acceleration of Drosophila subobscura evolutionary response to global warming in Europe
AU - Rodriguez Trelles Astruga, Francisco Jose
AU - Tarrio Fernandez, Rosa Maria
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2024.
PY - 2024/9/13
Y1 - 2024/9/13
N2 - The increasing risk of irreversible ecological transformation under global warming has boosted the need to understand the capacity of organisms to adapt to this change. Here, using a resurvey method of populations of the European fly Drosophila subobscura, we show that a known evolutionary response to global warming has accelerated in the past 20 years, in step with regional warming. This genetic response has come entirely by resorting pre-existing variation—and not from novel inversions—for tolerance to high temperature. Temperate populations are predicted to converge to the typical Mediterranean chromosomal composition by the mid-2050s, at which point this classic example of steep genetic cline will have vanished. Our results suggest that species with broad geographic ranges, large population sizes and high genetic diversity may have the evolutionary potential to cope with climate change.
AB - The increasing risk of irreversible ecological transformation under global warming has boosted the need to understand the capacity of organisms to adapt to this change. Here, using a resurvey method of populations of the European fly Drosophila subobscura, we show that a known evolutionary response to global warming has accelerated in the past 20 years, in step with regional warming. This genetic response has come entirely by resorting pre-existing variation—and not from novel inversions—for tolerance to high temperature. Temperate populations are predicted to converge to the typical Mediterranean chromosomal composition by the mid-2050s, at which point this classic example of steep genetic cline will have vanished. Our results suggest that species with broad geographic ranges, large population sizes and high genetic diversity may have the evolutionary potential to cope with climate change.
KW - evolutionary response, global warming, Drosophila
UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1038/s41558-024-02128-6#citeas
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02128-6
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85204116469&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41558-024-02128-6
DO - 10.1038/s41558-024-02128-6
M3 - Article
SN - 1758-678X
VL - 14
SP - 1101
EP - 1106
JO - Nature Climate Change
JF - Nature Climate Change
IS - 10
ER -