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Can natural selection maintain long-distance dispersal? Insight from a stream salamander system

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Abstract

Dispersal distributions are often characterized by many individuals that stay close to their origin and large variation in the distances moved by those that leave. This variation in dispersal distance can strongly influence demographic, ecological, and evolutionary processes. However, a lack of data on the fitness and phenotype of individual dispersers has impeded research on the role of natural selection in maintaining variation in dispersal distance. Six years of spatially explicit capture-mark-recapture data showed that survival increased with dispersal distance in the stream salamander Gyrinophilus porphyriticus. To understand the evolutionary implications of this fitness response, we tested whether variation in dispersal distance has a phenotypic basis. We used photographs of marked individuals to measure head, trunk, and leg morphology. We then tested whether dispersal distances over the six-year study period were predicted by these traits. Dispersal distance was significantly related to leg morphology: individuals with relatively long forelimbs and short hindlimbs dispersed the farthest. These results support the hypothesis that positive fitness consequences maintain phenotypes enabling long-distance dispersal. More broadly, they suggest that natural selection can promote variation in dispersal distance and associated phenotypes, offering an alternative to the view that dispersal distance is driven by stochastic or landscape-specific mechanisms.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Sweet Water Trust, the National Science Foundation (DEB-0105091 and DEB-0714782), and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. We are grateful for support from L. Turner, K. Evans, L. Greene, C. Shannon, C. Glastris, A. Margolis, B. Fisher, J. Tollefson, W. Lowe, and I. Lowe. This manuscript was improved with comments from B. Addis, M. Wilson, and B. Hossack.

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  1. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

    Winsor H. Lowe

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    Mark A. McPeek

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Correspondence to Winsor H. Lowe.

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Lowe, W.H., McPeek, M.A. Can natural selection maintain long-distance dispersal? Insight from a stream salamander system. Evol Ecol 26, 11–24 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-011-9500-z

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