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Phenotype adjustment promotes adaptive evolution in a game without conflict.

Sachi Yamaguchi1, Yoh Iwasa2

  • 1Department of Information Systems Creation, Faculty of Engineering, Kanagawa University, Yokohama 221-8686, Japan.

Theoretical Population Biology
|March 25, 2015
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Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to adapt to their environment. This study shows that adaptive phenotypic plasticity, especially with two-player adjustment, evolves to maximize fitness, unlike no adjustment scenarios.

Keywords:
Lifelong pairPhenotypic plasticitySex allocation

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Behavioral ecology

Background:

  • Organisms adapt phenotypes to environmental conditions, influencing adaptive evolution.
  • Phenotypic plasticity is a key mechanism for adaptation.
  • Evolutionary games model interactions and their fitness consequences.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the evolutionary outcomes of adaptive phenotypic plasticity in a two-player game.
  • To compare evolutionary dynamics with no adjustment, one-player adjustment, and two-player adjustment.
  • To determine how phenotypic plasticity affects fitness maximization.

Main Methods:

  • Modeling an evolutionary game with two players and no conflicts of interest.
  • Considering resource limitations and male investment costs.
  • Analyzing three adjustment scenarios: no adjustment, one-player adjustment, and two-player adjustment.

Main Results:

  • Both one-player and two-player phenotypic plasticity adjustments evolve to achieve maximum fitness.
  • Evolutionary dynamics without adjustment can fail to reach optimal fitness outcomes.
  • Under intermediate male costs, no adjustment leads to equal-sized hermaphrodites, while adjustments yield a small male and large female.

Conclusions:

  • Adaptive phenotypic plasticity, particularly two-player adjustment, is evolutionarily advantageous for maximizing fitness.
  • The absence of phenotypic adjustment can lead to suboptimal evolutionary outcomes.
  • Phenotypic plasticity plays a crucial role in shaping sex allocation and resource distribution in social organisms.