Adaptive Species Framework for Modeling Evolutionary Responses of Animals Under Environmental Stress

Abstract

As environmental change proceeds at an ever-quickening rate, understanding whether an environmentally impacted animal population is utilizing phenotypic plasticity, genetic adaptation, or some combination of both has become of paramount importance. The vast majority of evolutionary adaptation research to date has conceptualized plastic and genetic adaptive responses as independent modes of adaptation, providing little in the way of predictive guidance on how the balance of plasticity and genetics might change with accumulating environmental stress. Here, the study introduce an Adaptive Species Framework-a conceptual modeling approach to analyze how animal populations respond to environmental stress. Our framework conceptualizes plasticity and genetic adaptation as intrinsically linked, mutually functioning and interactive responses, the relative balance of which varies through time, as indicated by measures at trait, transcriptional, and behavioral levels. This framework integrates contemporary themes from plasticity- in- evolution, genomic responses to climate change, loss of transcriptional plasticity following adaptation in a marine copepod, genomic reaction norms as predictors of plastic and adaptive responses, animal behavior in the study of multi-stressor scenarios, behavior and stress-related phenotypes in urban animals, and Genomic and modelling in aided migrations to assess population adaptability. While this framework is presented without multi- generational field or laboratory data, it provides a coherent structure from which predictions of when an animal species might shift from a plastic-driven response toward genetic adaptation in the face of ongoing or increased environmental stress can be made – thus informing and supporting more robust conservation and management plans for animal wildlife.