Evolvable traits of organisms can alter the environment those organisms experience. While it is well appreciated that those modified environments can influence natural selection to which organisms are exposed, they can also influence the expression of genetic variances and covariances of traits under selection. When genetic variance and covariance change in response to changes in the evolving, modified environment, rates and outcomes of evolution also change. Here we discuss the basic mechanisms whereby organisms modify their environments, review how those modified environments have been shown to alter genetic variance and covariance, and discuss potential evolutionary consequences of such dynamics. With these dynamics, responses to selection can be more rapid and sustained, leading to more extreme phenotypes, or they can be slower and truncated, leading to more conserved phenotypes. Patterns of correlated selection can also change, leading to greater or less evolutionary independence of traits, or even causing convergence or divergence of traits, even when selection on them is consistent across environments. Developing evolutionary models that incorporate changes in genetic variances and covariances when environments themselves evolve requires developing methods to predict how genetic parameters respond to environments—frequently multifactorial environments. It also requires a population-level analysis of how traits of collections of individuals modify environments for themselves and/or others in a population, possibly in spatially explicit ways. Despite the challenges of elucidating the mechanisms and nuances of these processes, even qualitative predictions of how environment-modifying traits alter evolutionary potential are likely to improve projections of evolutionary outcomes.

中文翻译：

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生物改变环境的遗传后果

生物体的可进化特征可以改变这些生物体所经历的环境。众所周知，这些改变的环境可以影响有机体所面临的自然选择，但它们也可以影响选择下性状的遗传变异和协方差的表达。当遗传方差和协方差响应进化、修改环境的变化而变化时，进化的速率和结果也会发生变化。在这里，我们讨论了生物体改变其环境的基本机制，回顾了这些改变的环境如何被证明可以改变遗传方差和协方差，并讨论这种动态的潜在进化后果。有了这些动态，对选择的反应可以更快速和持续，导致更极端的表型，或者它们可以更慢和被截断，导致更保守的表型。相关选择的模式也可能发生变化，导致性状的进化独立性或多或少，甚至导致性状的收敛或分歧，即使对它们的选择在不同环境中是一致的。当环境本身进化时，开发包含遗传方差和协方差变化的进化模型需要开发方法来预测遗传参数如何响应环境——通常是多因素环境。它还需要对个体集合的特征如何以空间明确的方式为他们自己和/或其他人改变环境进行人口水平的分析。尽管阐明这些过程的机制和细微差别存在挑战，