Climate change is a significant future driver of change in coastal social-ecological systems. Our knowledge of impacts, adaptation options, and possible outcomes for marine environments and coastal industries is expanding, but remains limited and uncertain. Alternative scenarios are a way to explore potential futures under a range of conditions. We developed four alternative future scenarios fo...

Mate preference for well-adapted individuals may strengthen divergent selection and thereby facilitate adaptive divergence. We performed mate choice experiments in which we manipulated male red crossbill (Loxia curvirostra complex) feeding rates. Using association time as a proxy for preference, we found that females preferred faster foragers, which reinforces natural selection because poorly a...

Ecological diversification presents an enduring puzzle: how do novel ecological strategies evolve in organisms that are already adapted to their ecological niche? Most attempts to answer this question posit a primary role for genetic drift, which could carry populations through or around fitness "valleys" representing maladaptive intermediate phenotypes between alternative niches. Sexual select...

To what degree is the divergent adaptation responsible for life's phenotypic variety also responsible for generating the millions of species that manifest this variation? Theory predicts that ecological divergence among populations should promote reproductive isolation, and recent empirical studies provide support for this hypothesis in a limited number of specific taxa. However, the essential ...

New research suggests that secondary bacterial symbionts in insects act as a mechanism for horizontal genetic exchange among hosts, facilitating adaptation to new ecological niches.