Evolutionary dynamics
Priority effects have traditionally been studied as an ecological phenomenon, but evolutionary dynamics of communities can also be influenced by priority effects. Using microbial experiments, we have shown that small differences in immigration history can entirely change the extent of evolutionary diversification that happens within communities (
Fukami et al. 2007). These effects are driven by niche preemption and indirect facilitation among populations. In addition, early immigrants can evolve to be adaptive niche constructors, affecting the colonization success of late immigrants (
Callahan et al. 2014). We have also found that evolutionary priority effects are particularly strong when immigrants are not well adapted to the new habitat (
Knope et al. 2012) and originate from different source pools (
Zee and Fukami 2018). Furthermore, our theoretical analysis has suggested that rapid evolution of species traits helps to maintain strong priority effects that would otherwise disappear, indicating the need to consider eco-evolutionary dynamics for understanding historical contingency (
Wittmann and Fukami 2018). We have also shown that the hypotheses we have developed through microbial and theoretical experiments can be applied to macro-organisms. This research focused on the radiation of New Zealand plants over several million years (
Leopold et al. 2015). We are now working more with
nectar microbes to further refine our hypotheses on evolutionary priority effects.