Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Association for the Advancement of Science via the DOI in this record Data and materials availability: All code and data are available in the supplementary materials.The rate of adaptive evolution, the contribution of selection to genetic changes that increase mean fitness, is determined by the additive genetic variance in individual relative fitness. To date, there are few robust estimates of this parameter for natural populations, and it is therefore unclear whether adaptive evolution can play a meaningful role in short-term population dynamics. We developed and applied quantitative genetic methods to long-term datasets from 19 wild bird and mammal populations and found that, while estimates vary between populations, additive genetic variance in relative fitness is often substantial and, on average, twice that of previous estimates. We show that these rates of contemporary adaptive evolution can affect population dynamics and hence that natural selection has the potential to partly mitigate effects of current environmental change.Observatoire de Recherche Montpelliérain de l'Environnement (OSU-OREME)Agence Nationale de la Recheche (ANR)European Research CouncilBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaSwiss National Science FoundationNorwegian Research CouncilSwedish Research Council (VR)Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS)New Zealand Department of Conservation (DoC)Hihi Recovery Group, ZealandiaResearch EnglandRoyal Society of New ZealandAustralian Research Council (ARC)US National Science FoundationUS National Institute on AgingPrinceton Center for the Demography of AgingChicago Zoological SocietyMax Planck Institute for Demographic ResearchL.S.B. Leakey FoundationNational Geographic SocietyNational Center for Research ResourcesOffice of Research Infrastructure Programs of the National Institutes of HealthNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)Human Frontier Science ProgramUniversity of ZurichMAVA FoundationMammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South AfricaLeibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife ResearchDeutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftDeutscher Akademischer AustauschdienstMax Planck SocietyWerner Dessauer Stiftun