Rapid Rescue: Spatial Storage Effect Facilitates Evolutionary Rescue in Rapidly Changing Environments

The storage effect is a plausible natural mechanism that generates balanced genetic polymorphism in varying environments. Balanced polymorphism may facilitate evolutionary rescue, promoting the persistence of populations otherwise destined for extinction. However, it is unknown whether the storage effect can be established in small populations whose size is allowed to vary, and if so, whether it will lead to evolutionary rescue. In this study, we investigate if the spatial storage effect emerges and facilitates evolutionary rescue across small populations of variable sizes that inhabit heterogeneous temporally varying environments and exchange migrants. We use an eco-evolutionary model to examine the phenomenon under a wide set of conditions, including the magnitudes and periods of temporal variation, habitat harshness, migration rates, the degrees of spatial heterogeneity, and increasing fitness oscillations over time, all within the framework of the logistic population growth model. We find that the storage effect emerges and that it increases the persistence of populations in harsh temporally varying habitats beyond levels driven by migration alone under source-sink dynamics. This mechanism, which we call "rapid rescue" broadens the known conditions for population persistence in the face of sudden environmental change.