{
  "id": 12202962,
  "title": "Extreme climatic events shape adaptive potential by altering genetic variance for adult survival in a wild population",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/04/extreme-climatic-events-shape-adaptive-potential-by-altering-genetic",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-04T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.02.755590v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Extreme climatic events (ECEs) can potentially trigger rapid evolutionary changes, altering the viability of wild populations exposed to more unpredictable environments. The adaptive potential of these populations largely depends on additive genetic variance (V) in adult survival. However, the extent to which ECEs affect this variance, and the subsequent evolutionary consequences, has not been thoroughly explored or measured in real-world scenarios. This study presents a theoretical framework to understand how V depends on environmental severity, how these relationships are influenced by non-linear genotype-environment-phenotype interactions and population structure, and the implications for evolutionary adaptation. The researchers then examined 25 years of survival and pedigree data from European shags (Gulosus aristotelis) to analyze the variance in adult survival under various environmental conditions, including ECEs. Using a capture-recapture animal model, they found that V plays a significant role in adult survival across all years, suggesting a considerable adaptive potential. However, when partitioning V by environmental severity, they discovered that there is a substantial V in years with favorable conditions characterized by high survival rates, but negligible V in years with severe conditions resulting from ECEs and low survival rates. This finding indicates a genotype-by-environment interaction that limits adaptive potential during severe climate events. The researchers further explored how non-linear relationships between genotype, environment, and phenotype can distort or even invert these patterns, by decreasing the phenotype's expression of V in years with high mean survival rates and amplifying it in more extreme conditions with lower mean survival rates. Consequently, evolution in response to severe conditions could still be significant, even if V remains small. This research demonstrates how ECEs can modify adaptive potential, emphasizing the importance of incorporating the effects of environmental severity on genetic variation in fitness components into predictions of population resilience in the face of climate change.",
  "summary": "Extreme climatic events (ECEs) could potentially induce episodes of rapid adaptive evolution, altering the evolutionary trajectories and viability of wild populations experiencing increasingly stochastic environments. Adaptive potential stems substantially from additive genetic variance (V) in survival. However, the degree to which ECEs impact this variance, and the resulting evolutionary…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}