Abstract
Despite evolution by natural selection being a deterministic process well-established across both science and society, the extent to which evolution can be predicted remains debated. A large body of previous work has usefully highlighted how individual selective pressures and stochastic events can each affect the predictability of evolution in isolation. Here, we argue that predicting evolution can be aided by understanding interactions between different sources of selection, termed ‘complex selection’, rather than simply considering their individual or summed effects. For example, selection can be affected by external perturbations such as seasonal or rare climatic events, by factors internal to a system such as the frequency of traits in a population or population density, and also by interactions between these and other processes. We outline how understanding complex selection can be central to predicting directional evolution, stasis and a range of dynamics, including the coupling of ecological and evolutionary dynamics that shape biodiversity. The framework outlined here is derived from insights across a range of study systems and argues that the prediction of evolution can be feasibly improved through nuanced understanding of complex selection.
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Acknowledgements
P.N. was supported by the French Laboratory of Excellence project “TULIP” (ANR-10-LABX-41) funded by a government grant as part of the France 2030 programme, as a Senior Package to P.N. Z.G. was supported by NSF grants DEB 1844941 and DEB 2553946. The authors thank T. Reimchen for decades of insightful discussion concerning the complexity yet predictability of natural selection, and L.-M. Chevin for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Nosil, P., Gompert, Z. Evolution by natural selection can be complex yet predictable.
Nat. Rev. Biodivers. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-026-00200-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-026-00200-x
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