Understanding the movement of species’ ranges is a classic ecological problem that informs prediction of how invasive species will spread and how native range edges may expand under climate change. Historically treated as a purely ecological process, range expansion is now understood to involve eco-evolutionary feedbacks due to spatial genetic structure that emerges as populations spread. Specifically, heritable variation in dispersal can lead to the accumulation of high-dispersal alleles at expanding fronts (“spatial sorting”), and theory predicts this can accelerate range expansion. My lab has developed a powerful laboratory model to motivate and test eco-evolutionary theory: bean beetles expanding through experimental landscapes. Our work has shown that rapid evolution of dispersal can not only accelerate spread, as predicted by theory, but it can also amplify variability, making range expansion harder to predict.
Related publications:
- Miller, T.E.X., Angert, A. L., Brown, C.D., Lee-Yaw, J.A., Lewis, M., Lutscher, F., Marculis, N.G., Melbourne, B.A., Shaw, A.K., Szűcs, M., Tabares, O., Usui, T., Weiss-Lehman, C., Williams, J.L. 2020. Eco-evolutionary dynamics of range expansion Ecology 101: e03139
- Ochocki, B.M., Saltz, J.B., and T.E.X. Miller. 2020. Demography-dispersal trait correlations modify the eco-evolutionary dynamics of range expansion. American Naturalist 195: 231-246
- Williams, J., Hufbauer, R., and T.E.X. Miller. 2019. How evolution modifies the variability of range expansion. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 34: 903-913
- Ochocki, B.M. and T.E.X. Miller. 2017. Rapid evolution of dispersal ability makes biological invasions faster and more variable. Nature Communications 8:14315
- Wagner, N.K., Ochocki, B.M., Crawford, K., Compagnoni, A. and T.E.X. Miller. 2017. Genetic mixture of multiple source populations accelerates invasive range expansion. Journal of Animal Ecology 86:21-34