When a population experiences severe stress from a changing environment, evolution by natural selection can prevent its extinction, a process dubbed “evolutionary rescue.” However, evolution may be unable to track the sort of rapid environmental change being experienced by many modern-day populations. A potential solution is for organisms to respond to environmental change through phenotypic plasticity, which can buffer populations against change and thereby buy time for evolutionary rescue. In this review, we examine whether this process extends to situations in which the environmentally induced response is passed to offspring. As we describe, theoretical and empirical studies suggest that such “transgenerational plasticity” can increase population persistence. We discuss the implications of this process for conservation biology, outline potential limitations, and describe some applications. Generally, transgenerational plasticity may be effective at buying time for evolutionary rescue to occur.

中文翻译：

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通过跨代可塑性进行进化拯救：保护的证据和意义

当种群因环境变化而承受严重压力时，自然选择的进化可以防止其灭绝，这一过程被称为“进化拯救”。然而，进化可能无法追踪那种快速的许多现代人正在经历环境变化。一个潜在的解决方案是让生物体通过表型可塑性来应对环境变化，这可以缓冲种群对变化的影响，从而为进化拯救赢得时间。在这篇综述中，我们检查了这个过程是否延伸到环境诱导的反应传递给后代的情况。正如我们所描述的，理论和实证研究表明，这种“跨代可塑性”可以增加人口持久性。我们讨论了这一过程对保护生物学的影响，概述了潜在的局限性，并描述了一些应用。一般来说，跨代可塑性可能有效地为进化拯救的发生争取时间。