Intense Natural Selection on Morphology of Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon Pyrrhonota) a Decade Later: Did the Population Move between Adaptive Peaks?

摘要

Unusual climatic events often lead to intense natural selection on organisms. Whether episodic selection events result in permanent microevolutionary changes or are reversed by opposing selection pressures at a later time is rarely known, because most studies do not last long enough to witness rare events and document their aftermath. In 1996, unusually cold and wet weather in southwestern Nebraska led to the deaths of thousands of Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) over a 6-day period. Survivors were skeletally larger, with shorter wings and tails, and had less asymmetry in wing length than those that died. We determined trajectories of morphological traits in the decade following this event by measuring yearling birds each year from 1997 to 2006. Wing and middle tail-feather lengths continued to decrease, bill length and width continued to increase, tarsus length was unchanged, and levels of asymmetry in wing length increased. Cumulative directional change in wing, tail, and bill length was greater in the decade after selection than during the selection event itself. Morphological variation could not be explained by phenotypic plasticity resulting from better environmental conditions during growth, because weather variables (that influence food supply and ectoparasitism) were not significantly different before and after selection. There was no evidence that opposing selection restored skeletal size or wing or tail length to that before the selection event. The reasons for continued change in morphology in this population are unclear but may represent a population shift to a different fitness peak in the adaptive landscape as a consequence of the intense selection in 1996.