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Related Concept Videos

Frequency-dependent Selection01:21

Frequency-dependent Selection

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When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.
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Habitat fragmentation describes the division of a more extensive, continuous habitat into smaller, discontinuous areas. Human activities such as land conversion, as well as slower geological processes leading to changes in the physical environment, are the two leading causes of habitat fragmentation. The fragmentation process typically follows the same steps: perforation, dissection, fragmentation, shrinkage, and attrition.
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Small population sizes put a species at extreme risk of extinction due to a lack of variation, and a consequent decrease in adaptability. This weakens the chances of survival under pressures such as climate change, competition from other species, or new diseases. Large populations are more likely to survive pressures such as these, as such populations are more likely to harbor individuals that have genetic variants that are adaptive under new stresses. Small populations are much less...
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Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.
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Population size is dynamic, increasing with birth rates and immigration, and decreasing with death rates and emigration. In ideal conditions with unlimited resources, populations can increase exponentially, which plots as a J-shaped growth rate curve of population size against time. This type of curve is characteristic of newly-introduced invasive species, or populations that have suffered catastrophic declines and are rebounding.
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In a population that is not at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the frequency of alleles changes over time. Therefore, any deviations from the five conditions of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium can alter the genetic variation of a given population. Conditions that change the genetic variability of a population include mutations, natural selection, non-random mating, gene flow, and genetic drift (small population size).
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Age-dependent Dynamics of Locomotion in Caenorhabditis elegans: A Lyapunov Exponent Analysis
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Local negative frequency dependence can decrease global coexistence in fragmented populations.

Anush Devadhasan1,2, Oana Carja1

  • 1Department of Computational Biology, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|November 25, 2025
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Negative frequency-dependent (NFD) selection maintains diversity locally, but fragmentation paradoxically reduces coexistence. Habitat fragmentation can undermine NFD selection

Keywords:
complex spatial structurefragmented populationsfrequency-dependent selectionniche theorypopulation structure

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Population Genetics

Background:

  • Negative frequency-dependent (NFD) selection is a key mechanism for maintaining biological diversity and species coexistence in local populations.
  • The efficacy of NFD selection in maintaining diversity at landscape scales, especially in fragmented habitats, remains poorly understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of habitat fragmentation on the ability of NFD selection to maintain biodiversity across spatial scales.
  • To theoretically model and empirically test the interaction between NFD selection and fragmentation on species diversity.

Main Methods:

  • Developed a population-genetic model using the island framework to simulate NFD selection in fragmented populations.
  • Analyzed the relationship between fixation time, population size, and landscape fragmentation.
  • Applied a novel test based on a nonmonotonic species-area relationship to avian diversity data from the Ryukyu Islands.

Main Results:

  • Habitat fragmentation paradoxically reduces species coexistence and shortens fixation times under NFD selection compared to neutral processes.
  • Fragmentation creates a nonmonotonic species-area relationship, with diversity minimized at intermediate fragmentation scales.
  • Empirical data from the Ryukyu Islands show a pattern consistent with NFD selection interacting with fragmentation to suppress avian biodiversity.

Conclusions:

  • Habitat fragmentation can undermine the diversity-promoting effects of NFD selection, challenging its general role in maintaining biodiversity in heterogeneous landscapes.
  • The findings highlight the critical influence of spatial structure on the effectiveness of evolutionary mechanisms in shaping biodiversity patterns.