The ability to predict how natural populations will evolve and adapt to major changes in environmental conditions has long been of interest to evolutionary biologists and ecologists alike. The reality of global climate change has also created a pressing need for advancement in this particular area of research, as species are increasingly faced with rapid shifts in abiotic and biotic conditions. Evolutionary genomics has the potential to be incredibly useful as we move forward in addressing this need and in particular, evolve and resequence (E&R) studies—where researchers combine experimental evolution with whole‐genome sequencing—have an important role to play. However, while E&R studies have shown a great deal of promise in tackling fundamental questions regarding the genetics of adaptation (Long et al., 2015; Schlötterer et al., 2014), it is unclear whether results from laboratory experiments can be directly translated to natural populations. In a From the Cover article in this issue of Molecular Ecology, Hsu et al. (Mol Ecol, 29, 2020) explicitly contend with this issue by examining the overlap between genes implicated in thermal adaptation in a Drosophila melanogaster E&R study and genes identified by comparing natural populations from different latitudinal clines. They report significant correlations between the two sets of temperature‐adaptive genes and ultimately conclude that E&R studies can indeed generate insights applicable to populations inhabiting complex natural environments. While more work is needed to assess the generality of these conclusions, Hsu and Belmouaden (Mol Ecol, 29, 2020) contribute an important precedent.

中文翻译：

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实验室进化实验可以教我们自然种群吗？

长期以来，进化生物学家和生态学家都对预测自然种群将如何进化并适应环境条件的重大变化的能力感兴趣。随着物种越来越多地面临非生物和生物条件的迅速变化，全球气候变化的现实也迫切要求在这一特定研究领域取得进展。随着我们不断满足这一需求，进化基因组学有巨大的潜力，尤其是在进化与重测序（E＆R）研究中，研究人员将实验进化与全基因组测序相结合，发挥着重要作用。然而，尽管E＆R研究在解决有关适应遗传学的基本问题上显示出了很大的希望（Long等，2015；Schlötterer等，2014），尚不清楚实验室实验的结果是否可以直接转化为自然种群。在本期《分子生态学》的“从封面”文章中，Hsu等人。（摩尔ECOL，29，2020）明确检查的热适应有关的基因之间的重叠与这个问题相抗衡果蝇E＆R研究和基因从不同纬度clines比较自然种群鉴定。他们报告了两组温度适应基因之间的显着相关性，并最终得出结论，E＆R研究确实可以产生适用于居住在复杂自然环境中的种群的见解。虽然还需要进行更多的工作，以评估这些结论，Hsu和Belmouaden（的一般性分子ECOL，29，2020）有助于一个重要的先例。