
@article {160485,
	title = {Founders predict trait evolution and population performance after evolutionary rescue in the red flour beetle.},
	journal = {Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A},
	volume = {122},
	year = {2025},
	month = {2025 Sep 09},
	pages = {e2506244122},
	abstract = {<p>Evolutionary rescue helps populations survive environmental change, but the phenotypic and demographic factors associated with rescue dynamics and its long-term effects remain unclear. We experimentally evolved 10 wild-collected populations of flour beetles from across India in a suboptimal corn resource for 70 generations (\&gt;5 y), collecting \&gt;10,000 population census points book-ended by measurements of fitness-related traits for 30 experimental lines. Despite clear ancestral trait differences, all lines showed highly parallel evolutionary rescue within 20 generations. Long-term average population size varied across source populations and was positively correlated with ancestral development rate, which increased convergently across populations and emerged as the single best predictor of population performance during and after evolutionary rescue. Notably, specific demographic events during rescue (such as the rate of population decline and recovery) were uncorrelated both with ancestral trait distributions and post-rescue adaptation. Our results support prior work showing founder traits as key predictors of adaptation, and highlight their role in long-term adaptation and trait evolution following evolutionary rescue.</p>
},
	keywords = {Adaptation, Physiological, Animals, Biological Evolution, Coleoptera, India, Phenotype, Population Density, Population Dynamics},
	issn = {1091-6490},
	doi = {10.1073/pnas.2506244122},
	author = {Ravi Kumar, Vrinda and Buddh, Shyamsunder and Singhal, Shivansh and Prakash, Arun and Agashe, Deepa}
}
@article {137346,
	title = {A theoretical perspective on Waddington{\textquoteright}s genetic assimilation experiments.},
	journal = {Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A},
	volume = {120},
	year = {2023},
	month = {2023 Dec 19},
	pages = {e2309760120},
	abstract = {<p>Genetic assimilation is the process by which a phenotype that is initially induced by an environmental stimulus becomes stably inherited in the absence of the stimulus after a few generations of selection. While the concept has attracted much debate after being introduced by C. H. Waddington 70 y ago, there have been few experiments to quantitatively characterize the phenomenon. Here, we revisit and organize the results of Waddington{\textquoteright}s original experiments and follow-up studies that attempted to replicate his results. We then present a theoretical model to illustrate the process of genetic assimilation and highlight several aspects that we think require further quantitative studies, including the gradual increase of penetrance, the statistics of delay in assimilation, and the frequency of unviability during selection. Our model captures Waddington{\textquoteright}s picture of developmental paths in a canalized landscape using a stochastic dynamical system with alternative trajectories that can be controlled by either external signals or internal variables. It also reconciles two descriptions of the phenomenon-Waddington{\textquoteright}s, expressed in terms of an individual organism{\textquoteright}s developmental paths, and that of Bateman in terms of the population distribution crossing a hypothetical threshold. Our results provide theoretical insight into the concepts of canalization, phenotypic plasticity, and genetic assimilation.</p>
},
	keywords = {Adaptation, Physiological, Biological Evolution, Epigenesis, Genetic, Models, Genetic, Penetrance, Phenotype},
	issn = {1091-6490},
	doi = {10.1073/pnas.2309760120},
	author = {Raju, Archishman and Xue, BingKan and Leibler, Stanislas}
}
