Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics - Early Publication
Reviews in Advance appear online ahead of the full published volume. View expected publication dates for upcoming volumes.
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Evolutionary Immunology
First published online: 06 May 2025More LessImmune systems pose fascinating puzzles for evolutionary biologists. They feature some of the most polymorphic genes and reflect the strongest natural selection known. Evolution of immune systems plays a key role in host–parasite interactions, speciation, and eco-evolutionary dynamics that have community- and ecosystem-wide consequences. Conversely, evolutionary perspectives enrich our understanding of immunology, revealing macroevolutionary origins of key immune traits, their function in wild populations as opposed to sterile lab settings, and trade-offs that constrain immune adaptation. Here, we review key themes in the fast-growing interdisciplinary field of evolutionary immunology, focusing on multicellular animals. We describe macroevolution of immune functions, evidence of contemporary selection on immune genes, and the underlying theory seeking to explain this selection at multiple biological scales. We identify major open questions and opportunities in the field today. Foremost among these is the challenge of accurately and appropriately measuring relevant immune traits in wild and nonmodel organisms, which is necessary to understand their evolution in natural settings. A second challenge is to describe how diverse communities of symbionts impose selection on the highly multivariate and pleiotropic immune system.
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The Evolutionary Ecology of Species Interactions: Shared Mechanisms of Natural Selection and Population Regulation
First published online: 29 April 2025More LessThe evolutionary and ecological dynamics of each species are simultaneously shaped by interactions with abiotic resources and many other species: prey, herbivores, predators, pathogens, and mutualists. In this review, I explore the conceptual linkages and empirical evidence for how ecological and evolutionary dynamics jointly assemble communities across the landscape and foster coexistence among species within communities. The abundances and traits of interacting species jointly shape the dynamics of population regulation and the regimes of natural selection that those interacting species face. While theory focuses primarily on competition, empirical studies on many taxa demonstrate that all types of species interactions play critical roles in excluding some species, fostering the coexistence of other species in various communities, and imposing natural selection that shapes these ecological outcomes. These empirical studies make clear the synergy that emerges from understanding the fitness and trait differences that foster coexistence and impose natural selection between interacting species.
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