Evolutionary Rescue - bridging the gap between theory and experiments

Session

Keynote

1 Jul 2025, 09:30

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology

6. Quantifying stochastic establishment of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the impact of biotic interactions

Helen Alexander

01/07/2025, 09:30

Stochastic establishment of adaptive genotypes (survival and outgrowth of initially rare lineages) is a key step in evolutionary rescue. Despite featuring in theoretical models, this process has received little attention in experimental biology. Here I will describe how we can quantify the probability of establishment with low-tech, high-throughput experimental assays combined with statistical...

52. Evolution of species’ range and niche in changing environments can drive range fragmentation

Jitka Polechová

02/07/2025, 09:30

In times of accelerating climate change, there is an urgent need for a predictive theory of species’ range shifts, adaptation, and species’ resilience under changing environments. Current predictions are limited, as they rely on theory that neglects important interactions between ecological and evolutionary forces. I will demonstrate that the feedback between selection, genetic drift, and...

23. Indirect Evolutionary Facilitation Promotes Community Resilience to Environmental Disturbances

Lutz Becks

02/07/2025, 13:30

Global environmental change threatens both the persistence of species and the stability of ecosystems, often demanding rapid evolutionary adaptation. While traditional perspectives have focused on evolutionary change within threatened species, this approach overlooks the crucial influence of evolutionary responses in interacting species. The likelihood and consequences of such indirect...

22. Experimental evidence for the role of population history and ecological contexts in evolutionary rescue

Laure Olazcuaga

03/07/2025, 09:30

Environmental change often occurs abruptly, placing natural populations at risk of extinction unless they adapt rapidly—a process known as evolutionary rescue. While theory and empirical work suggest that genetic variation, population size, and the degree of maladaptation influence the likelihood of rescue, the roles of population history and ecological interactions remain less well...

54. Evolutionary rescue as a lens into classical evolutionary questions, including the evolution imprint of temporal variation

Robert D. Holt

03/07/2025, 14:00

Evolutionary rescue occurs when one or more populations are declining in abundance and occupancy, and are facing extinction because of environmental change, but adaptation by natural selection occurs sufficiently rapidly to boost mean fitness and abundance, permitting persistence in the changed environments. Understanding when rescue occurs, and when it does not, is pertinent not just to...