ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2013
Evolutionary rescue and the limits of adaptation.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 115 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
115 citing papers in PubMed.
- From individuals to networks: The role of variation in plant-pollinator communities' responses to global change.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Review
- Trait Shifts and Vertical Redistribution Enable Nematode-Trapping Fungi to Adapt to Fire Disturbance.Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Shifts in Demography in Changing Ecological Conditions in a Dependent-Lineage Population of Harvester Ant Colonies.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Insecticide resistance evolution and assisted gene flow interact to shape the evolution of plasticity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Introgression of thermal tolerance alleles drives adaptation despite risk of mitonuclear conflict.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Summer Rainfall Drives Adaptation with Gene Flow in a Widespread Butterfly.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- "Excluded phenotypes" restrict genetic paths toward adaptation in declining populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Density Dependence During Evolutionary Rescue Increases Extinction Risk but Does Not Prevent Adaptation.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Intra- and inter-specific differences of upper thermal limits in the sand darters (Percidae:Conservation physiology · 2026Review
- Phenological Variation and Evolution Across Space and Time in the Scarlet Monkeyflower (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Effects of Extreme Climatic Events on Evolutionary Processes.Global change biology · 2025Review
- Larval Adaptation to Salinity Shock in Cane Toads (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Complex and lasting impacts of heatwaves on life-history traits and fitness in Daphnia magna.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Epigenetic Responses to Anthropogenic Versus Natural Sources of Oil Exposure Differ in Wild Arctic Seabird Populations.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Multiple Stressors in the Anthropocene: Urban Evolutionary History Modifies Sensitivity to the Toxic Effects of Crude Oil Exposure in Killifish.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Mutualism breakdown underpins evolutionary rescue in an obligate cross-feeding bacterial consortium.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Multiple stressors in the Anthropocene: Urban evolutionary history modifies sensitivity to the toxic effects of crude oil exposure in killifish.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Coevolution of marine phytoplankton and Alteromonas bacteria in response to pCO2 and coculture.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Widespread Adaptive Introgression of Major Histocompatibility Complex Genes across Vertebrate Hybrid Zones.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Evolution fails to rescue a population in an increasingly variable environment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
55 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Populations subject to severe stress may be rescued by natural selection, but its operation is restricted by ecological and genetic constraints. The cost of natural selection expresses the limited capacity of a population to sustain the load of mortality or sterility required for effective selection. Genostasis expresses the lack of variation that prevents many populations from adapting to stress. While the role of relative fitness in adaptation is well understood, evolutionary rescue emphasizes the need to recognize explicitly the importance of absolute fitness. Permanent adaptation requires a range of genetic variation in absolute fitness that is broad enough to provide a few extreme types capable of sustained growth under a stress that would cause extinction if they were not present. This principle implies that population size is an important determinant of rescue. The overall number of individuals exposed to selection will be greater when the population declines gradually under a constant stress, or is progressively challenged by gradually increasing stress. In gradually deteriorating environments, survival at lethal stress may be procured by prior adaptation to sublethal stress through genetic correlation. Neither the standing genetic variation of small populations nor the mutation supply of large populations, however, may be sufficient to provide evolutionary rescue for most populations.
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Registered trials
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