Allee effects, immigration, and the evolution of species' niches

Theoretical studies of adaptation to sink environments (with conditions outside the niche requirements of a species) have shown that immigration from source habitats can either facilitate or inhibit local adaptation. Here, we examine the influence of immigration on the evolution of local adaptation, given an Allee effect (i.e., at low densities, absolute fitness increases with population density). We consider a deterministic model for evolution at a haploid locus, and a stochastic individual-based model for evolution of a quantitative trait, and several kinds of Allee effects. We demonstrate that increased immigration can greatly facilitate adaptive evolution in the sink; with greater immigration, local population sizes rise, and because of the Allee effect, there is a positive indirect effect of immigration on local fitness. This makes it easier for alleles of modest effect to be captured by natural selection, transforming the sink into a locally adapted population that can persist without immigration.