In this issue of Evolution, Medicine and Public Health, Lea and colleagues argue that there are major advantages to bringing together biomedical and evolutionary perspectives on plasticity. To develop this approach, they propose two contrasting scenarios for 'developmental plasticity as adaptation': that it reflects adjustments to resolve the effects of early 'constraints', or that it adjusts p...

Non-random mating provides multiple evolutionary benefits and can result in speciation. Biological organisms are characterised by a myriad of different traits, many of which can serve as mating cues. We consider multiple mechanisms of non-random mating simultaneously within a unified modelling framework in an attempt to understand better which are more likely to evolve in natural populations go...

Successful invasion may depend of the capacity of a species to adjust genetically to a spatially varying environment. This research modeled a species invasion by examining the interaction between a quantitative genetic trait and population density. It assumed: (I) a quantitative genetic trait describes the adaptation of an individual to its local ecological conditions; (2) populations far from ...

While there is no question that successful mitigation strategies remain critical in the quest to avoid worst-case climate change scenarios, we have passed the point where mitigation efforts alone can deal with the problems that climate change is creating. Because of “committed” warming — climate change that will occur regardless of mitigation measures, a result of the already-accumulated greenh...

This paper outlines a framework for understanding gameplay from the perspective of ecological psychology. According to this perspective, gameplay can be described in terms of perceiving, acting on and transforming the affordances that are related to a game system or to other players in a game. Challenges in games have an emphasis on perceiving suitable actions and/or performing suitable actions...

Transcriptomics via RNA-seq has rapidly emerged as a powerful tool for ecological and evolutionary studies, enabling genome-scale studies of adaptation via regulation of global gene expression. Here we present a de novo transcriptome for the desert rainbowfish (Melanotaenia splendida tatei) based on individuals sampled in the Lake Eyre Basin, Australia's arid zone river system. Recently develop...

Change is a defining characteristic of coastal social-ecological systems, yet the magnitude and speed of contemporary change is challenging the adaptive capacity of even the most robust coastal communities. In the context of multiple drivers of change, it has become increasingly important to identify how threatened communities adapt to livelihood stressors. We investigate how adaptation is nego...

The arms race of adaptation and counter adaptation in predator-prey interactions is a fascinating evolutionary dynamic with many consequences, including local adaptation and the promotion or maintenance of diversity. Although such antagonistic coevolution is suspected to be widespread in nature, experimental documentation of the process remains scant, and we have little understanding of the imp...

Climate adaptation has emerged as a mainstream risk management strategy for assisting in maintaining socio-ecological systems within the boundaries of a safe operating space. Yet, there are limits to the ability of systems to adapt. Here, we introduce the concept of an ―adaptation frontier‖, which is defined as a socio-ecological system’s transitional adaptive operating space between safe and u...