Adaptive Responses to Landscape Disturbances: Theory

Parvinen, Kalle

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511542022.019

Cited by 10 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…As we have previously demonstrated (Travis and Dytham 1998, 1999) unintelligent dispersers, such as a plants with wind‐dispersed seed, are likely to evolve shorter dispersal distances in response to habitat fragmentation, and results from this paper lead us to predict that habitat loss will eventually lead to younger age at death for individuals in these populations. We could also speculate on the effect of habitat persistence and habitat quality on age at death from what we know about its effect on dispersal distance (Travis et al 1999, Travis 2001, Murrell et al 2002, Poethke and Hovestadt 2002, Parvinen 2004). However, changes in habitat persistence can substantially alter the nature of the spatial population dynamics and this in turn can modify the strength of kin selection.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving dispersal and age at death

Dytham¹,

Travis²

2006

Oikos

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2006. Evolving dispersal and age at death. Á Oikos 113: 530 Á538.Traditional, and often competing, theories on ageing agree that a programmed age at death must have arisen as a side effect of natural selection, and that it can have no adaptive value of its own. However, theoretical models suggest that ageing and programmed death can be adaptive. Travis J. M. J. suggested that if fecundity declines with age, a programmed age of death evolves through kin selection and that the nature of dispersal is crucial as it determines the degree of spatial structure and hence the strength of kin selection. Here, using a similar model, we consider the interplay between dispersal and age of death. We incorporate more realistic dispersal kernels and allow both dispersal and age of death to evolve. Our results show each trait can evolve in response to the other: earlier age of death evolves when individuals disperse less and greater dispersal distances evolve when individuals are programmed to die later. When we allow dispersal and age of death to evolve at the same time we typically find that dispersal evolves more rapidly, and that ageing then evolves in response to the new dispersal regime. The cost of dispersal is crucial in determining the evolution of both traits. We argue both that ageing is an overlooked ecological process, and that the field of gerontology could learn a lot from evolutionary ecology. We suggest that it is time to develop the field of ecological gerontology and we highlight a few areas where future work might be particularly rewarding.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolving dispersal and age at death

Dytham¹,

Travis²

2006

Oikos

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“…This accounts for the fact that models of evolutionary suicide often involve traits related to cooperation that begets Allee effects, such as positively density-dependent dispersal [49,57], group effects against enemies such as predators [47], altruism [58,59], mutualism [50,60,61] and facilitation [62]. These traits shape ecological interactions and generate Allee effects.…”

Section: Examples: Theoretical and Empiricalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eco-evolutionary feedbacks, adaptive dynamics and evolutionary rescue theory

Ferrière

Legendre

2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

125

122

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Adaptive dynamics theory has been devised to account for feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes. Doing so opens new dimensions to and raises new challenges about evolutionary rescue. Adaptive dynamics theory predicts that successive trait substitutions driven by eco-evolutionary feedbacks can gradually erode population size or growth rate, thus potentially raising the extinction risk. Even a single trait substitution can suffice to degrade population viability drastically at once and cause ‘evolutionary suicide’. In a changing environment, a population may track a viable evolutionary attractor that leads to evolutionary suicide, a phenomenon called ‘evolutionary trapping’. Evolutionary trapping and suicide are commonly observed in adaptive dynamics models in which the smooth variation of traits causes catastrophic changes in ecological state. In the face of trapping and suicide, evolutionary rescue requires that the population overcome evolutionary threats generated by the adaptive process itself. Evolutionary repellors play an important role in determining how variation in environmental conditions correlates with the occurrence of evolutionary trapping and suicide, and what evolutionary pathways rescue may follow. In contrast with standard predictions of evolutionary rescue theory, low genetic variation may attenuate the threat of evolutionary suicide and small population sizes may facilitate escape from evolutionary traps.

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“…Olivieri & Gouyon (1997) refer to this impact as the metapopulation effect. Despite much subsequent interest in both metapopulation ecology and the evolution of dispersal, to date researchers rarely quantify by how much evolved dispersal rates or distances deviate from maximal population‐level performance (but see Olivieri & Gouyon, 1997; Parvinen, 2004; Travis et al , 2009; Travis, Smith & Ranwala, 2010). These examples clearly illustrate that there is no reason to expect that dispersal evolution at the individual level produces optimal behaviour at the level of a population.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inertia: the discrepancy between individual and common good in dispersal and prospecting behaviour

2010

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The group selection debate of the 1960s made it clear that evolution does not necessarily increase population performance. Individuals can be selected to have traits that diminish a common good and make population persistence difficult. At the extreme, the discrepancy between levels of selection is predicted to make traits evolve towards values at which a population can no longer persist (evolutionary suicide). Dispersal and prospecting are prime examples of traits that have a strong influence on population persistence under environmental and demographic stochasticity. Theory predicts that an 'optimal' dispersal strategy from a population point of view can differ considerably from that produced by individual-level selection. Because dispersal is frequently risky or otherwise costly, individuals are often predicted to disperse less than would be ideal for population performance (persistence or size). We define this discrepancy as 'inertia' and examine current knowledge of its occurrence and effects on population dynamics in nature. We argue that inertia is potentially widespread but that a framework is currently lacking for predicting precisely the extent to which it has a real influence on population persistence. The opposite of inertia, 'hypermobility' (more dispersal by individuals than would maximize population performance) remains a possibility: it is known that highest dispersal rates do not lead to best expected population performance, and examples of such high dispersal evolving exist at least in the theoretical literature. We also show, by considering prospecting behaviour, that similar issues arise in species with advanced cognitive and learning abilities. Individual prospecting strategies and the information acquired during dispersal are known to influence the decisions and therefore the fate of individuals and, as a corollary, populations. Again, the willingness of individuals to sample environments might evolve to levels that are not optimal for populations. This conflict can take intriguing forms. For example, better cognitive abilities of individuals may not always lead to better population-level performance. Simulation studies have found that 'blind' dispersal can lead to better connected metapopulations than cognitively more advanced habitat choice rules: the latter can lead to too many individuals sticking to nearby safe habitat. The study of the mismatch between individual and population fitness should not be a mere intellectual exercise. Population managers typically need to take a population-level view of performance, which may necessitate human intervention if it differs from what is selected for. We conclude that our knowledge of inertia and hypermobility would advance faster if theoretical studies--without much additional effort--quantified the population consequences of the evolving traits and compared this with hypothetical (not selectively favoured) dispersal rules, and if empirical studies were similarly conducted with the differing levels of selection in mind.

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Adaptive Responses to Landscape Disturbances: Theory

Cited by 10 publications

References 44 publications

Evolving dispersal and age at death

Evolving dispersal and age at death

Eco-evolutionary feedbacks, adaptive dynamics and evolutionary rescue theory

Inertia: the discrepancy between individual and common good in dispersal and prospecting behaviour

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