Meeting Abstract
The Earth’s environment is rapidly changing, and this may have dire consequences for the world’s biota. When environments change rapidly, mean phenotypes in a population become mismatched with local fitness optima. This mismatch can drive an increase in the strength, and form, of selection on traits linked with fitness. There is a well-established relationship between the biomechanics of lizard morphological traits and habitat structure. Previous studies on lizards have found that longer limbs lead to greater performance on broader perches, while larger toe-pads are favored at higher perch heights. Using a tropical lizard system, we predicted that lizards with longer hind limbs and larger toe pads would be favored on islands with broader perches (larger trees). We transplanted approximately four hundred uniquely-marked slender anoles (A. apletophallus) from a single source population to six small islands in Lake Gatun, Panama. These islands differ in habitat structure from each other and from mainland Panama. We conducted mark-recapture over the breeding season in both the first (parental population) and second (F1) generations to estimate viability selection and the overall strength and form of selection in each of these populations. We discuss our results in the context of the role of contemporary evolution in mediating the responses of populations to rapid environmental change.
