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Land colonisation by fish is associated with predictable changes in life history

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Abstract

The colonisation of new environments is a central evolutionary process, yet why species make such transitions often remains unknown because of the difficulty in empirically investigating potential mechanisms. The most likely explanation for transitions to new environments is that doing so conveys survival benefits, either in the form of an ecological release or new ecological opportunity. Life history theory makes explicit predictions about how traits linked to survival and reproduction should change with shifts in age-specific mortality. We used these predictions to examine whether a current colonisation of land by fishes might convey survival benefits. We found that blenny species with more terrestrial lifestyles exhibited faster reproductive development and slower growth rates than species with more marine lifestyles; a life history trade off that is consistent with the hypothesis that mortality has become reduced in younger life stages on land. A plausible explanation for such a shift is that an ecological release or opportunity on land has conveyed survival benefits relative to the ancestral marine environment. More generally, our study illustrates how life history theory can be leveraged in novel ways to formulate testable predictions on why organisms might make transitions into novel environments.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Alex Kerr and Brett Taylor for logistical support on Guam, Georgina Cooke for assistance in specimen collection, Iain Suthers for the use of his lab equipment and David Chapple and several anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this paper. This work was supported by an Australian Research Council grant to T. J. O., and a postgraduate research award from the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences to E. R. M. P. This study was covered by the University of New South Wales Animal Care and Ethics Committee protocol 11/36b initially approved on 10 March 2011 and most recently reviewed on 28 February 2013. All data from this publication have been archived in the Dryad Digital Repository (doi:10.5061/dryad.55f35). The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Author contribution statement

T. J. O. conceived the project. E. R. M. P. collected the data and performed the analyses. A. M. F. contributed to processing specimens. E. R. M. P., A. M. F. and T. J. O. wrote the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Evolution and Ecology Research Centre and the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Edward R. M. Platt & Terry J. Ord

  2. School of Life Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Ashley M. Fowler

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  1. Edward R. M. Platt
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  2. Ashley M. Fowler
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Correspondence to Terry J. Ord.

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Communicated by Steve Swearer.

Highlighted student paper We use the study of life history in a novel way to investigate the potential consequences of the colonisation of a novel habitat. Much has been made of how transitions into new environments promote adaptive evolution and speciation but our understanding of why organisms make these transitions in the first place is far more limited. Our study provides a unique perspective on this question by leveraging an extraordinary vertebrate example of a major ecological transition: the colonisation of land by marine fish.

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Platt, E.R.M., Fowler, A.M. & Ord, T.J. Land colonisation by fish is associated with predictable changes in life history. Oecologia 181, 769–781 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3593-6

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