Impacts of limits to adaptation on population and community persistence in a changing environment

A key issue in predicting how ecosystems will respond to environmental change is understanding why populations and communities are able to live and reproduce in some parts of ecological and geographical space, but not in others. The limits to adaptation that cause ecological niches to vary in position and width across taxa and environmental contexts determine how communities and ecosystems emerge from selection on phenotypes and genomes. Ecological trade-offs mean that phenotypes can only be optimal in some environments, unless these trade-offs can be reshaped through evolution.

However, the amount and rate of evolution is itself limited by genetic architectures, developmental systems (including phenotypic plasticity), and the legacies of recent evolutionary history. We here summarize adaptive limits and their ecological consequences in time (evolutionary rescue) and space (species' range limits), relating theoretical predictions to empirical tests. We then highlight key avenues for future research in this area, from better connections between evolution and demography, to analyzing the genomic architecture of adaptation, the dynamics of plasticity, and interactions between the biotic and abiotic environment. Progress on these questions will help understand when and where evolution and phenotypic plasticity will allow species and communities to persist in the face of rapid environmental change.