Robustness and predictability of evolution in bottlenecked populations

Deterministic and stochastic evolutionary processes drive adaptation in natural populations. The strength of each component process is determined by the population size: deterministic components prevail in very large populations, while stochastic components are the driving mechanisms in small ones. Many natural populations, however, experience intermittent periods of growth, moving through states in which either stochastic or deterministic processes prevail. This growth is often countered by population bottlenecks, which abound in both natural and laboratory populations. Here we investigate how population bottlenecks shape the process of adaptation. We demonstrate that adaptive trajectories in populations experiencing regular bottlenecks can be naturally scaled in time units of generations; with this scaling the time courses of adaptation, fitness variance, and genetic diversity all become relatively insensitive to the timing of population bottlenecks, provided the bottleneck size exceeds a few thousand individuals. We also include analyses at the genotype level to investigate the impact of population bottlenecks on the predictability and distribution of evolutionary pathways. Irrespective of the timing of population bottlenecks, we find that predictability increases with population size. We also find that predictability of the adaptive pathways increases in increasingly rugged fitness landscapes. Overall, our work reveals that both the adaptation rate and the predictability of evolutionary trajectories are relatively robust to population bottlenecks.

Automated summary

Deterministic and stochastic evolutionary processes contribute to adaptation in natural populations, with the former prevalent in large populations and the latter in small populations. Population bottlenecks shape the process of adaptation, but populations experiencing regular bottlenecks show relatively robust adaptation rates and increased predictability of evolutionary trajectories. Additionally, predictability of adaptive pathways is influenced by population size and fitness landscapes.