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Cues and the optimal timing of activities under environmental changes
John M McNamara1, Zoltan Barta, Marcel Klaassen
1School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, UK.
Ecology Letters
|October 25, 2011
Summary
Organisms use environmental cues for timing life activities, but how environmental changes affect this timing is unclear. Our model shows that changes in cue predictability and old responses to new conditions determine fitness outcomes.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Behavioral Ecology
Background:
- Organisms rely on environmental cues to anticipate resource availability and time critical activities.
- Current understanding of cue-environment relationships and their plasticity under changing conditions is limited.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a general model investigating the relationship between environmental cues and optimal timing of life history activities.
- To quantify fitness consequences of mistiming behaviors due to environmental shifts.
Main Methods:
- Developed a general mathematical model to analyze cue-timing relationships.
- Decomposed fitness changes into components related to cue predictability and response mismatch.
Main Results:
- The model quantifies fitness loss from suboptimal timing.
- Fitness consequences of environmental change can be negative, neutral, or positive.
- Outcomes depend critically on how cue-environment relationships and optimal timing are altered.
Conclusions:
- Environmental changes can have diverse impacts on organismal timing and fitness.
- Understanding the specific effects on cue function and response is crucial for predicting evolutionary trajectories.
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