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Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

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Evolution of density-dependent dispersal in a structured metapopulation.

Stefan A H Geritz¹, Mats Gyllenberg, Petr Ondrácek

¹Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Helsinki, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland.

Mathematical Biosciences

|April 14, 2009

Summary

We explored how population density affects species movement in changing environments. Higher resource availability favors increased dispersal, while higher catastrophe rates lead to optimal, but not maximum, dispersal.

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Mathematical Biology

Background:

Metapopulations face local population extinctions due to catastrophes.
Dispersal strategies are crucial for metapopulation survival.
Density-dependent dispersal influences population dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the evolution of density-dependent dispersal strategies.
To understand how resource-consumer dynamics shape emigration rates.
To determine evolutionarily stable dispersal rates under catastrophic events.

Main Methods:

Utilizing structured metapopulation dynamics and adaptive dynamics theories.
Mechanistically deriving dispersal functions from a resource-consumer model.
Analyzing emigration rates as sigmoid functions of local consumer density.

Main Results:

Identified a unique evolutionarily stable and attracting dispersal rate (kappa(*)).
Dispersal rate increases with resource productivity and dispersal survival.
Dispersal rate decreases with resource decay rate and shows a unimodal relationship with catastrophe rate.

Conclusions:

Density-dependent dispersal evolves as a sigmoid function.
Environmental factors like resource availability and catastrophe rates shape optimal dispersal strategies.
The evolutionarily stable dispersal rate balances risks and benefits of movement.