Founders predict trait evolution and population performance after evolutionary rescue in the red flour beetle

ABSTRACT Evolutionary rescue helps populations survive environmental change, but the phenotypic and demographic factors associated with rescue dynamics and its long-term effects remain unclear. We experimentally evolved 10 wild-collected populations of flour beetles from across India in a suboptimal corn resource for 70 generations (>5 years), collecting >10,000 population census points book-ended by measurements of fitness-related traits for 30 experimental lines. Despite clear ancestral trait differences, all lines showed highly parallel evolutionary rescue within 20 generations. Long-term average population size varied across source populations and was positively correlated with ancestral development rate, which increased convergently across populations and emerged as the single best predictor of population performance during and after evolutionary rescue. Notably, specific demographic events during rescue (such as the rate of population decline and recovery) were uncorrelated both with ancestral trait distributions and post-rescue adaptation. Our results support prior work showing founder traits as key predictors of adaptation, and highlight their role in long-term adaptation and trait evolution following evolutionary rescue. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Understanding how populations adapt to sudden environmental change is vital given accelerating biodiversity declines, the rise of antimicrobial resistance and climate change. We chart evolutionary rescue — where rapid adaptation prevents extinction — in flour beetles across 70 generations. Using >10,000 census points and measuring fitness in ancestors, their offspring and in evolved lines, we show that larval development rate is the strongest correlate of long-term population success across diverse wild-collected populations. The effect of ancestral variation is dynamic and disassociated from finer-grained details of the rescue. All populations show highly parallel evolutionary rescue, with convergent evolution in key traits. These findings have direct implications for predicting species’ survival after environmental change, ranging from conservation to pest and pathogen management.