Evol Ecol Res 7: 1-21 (2005)     Full PDF if your library subscribes.

Adaptive dynamics on a lattice: role of spatiality in competition, co-existence and evolutionary branching

Krisztián Mágori,* Péter Szabó, Ferenc Mizera and Géza Meszéna

Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1A, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary

Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed.
e-mail: cta@angel.elte.hu

ABSTRACT

We investigated the effect of limited dispersal on co-existence and evolutionary branching on a lattice. The ‘contact process’, which is the minimal model of population growth on a lattice, is modified by introducing local resource competition in addition to site competition. We study phenotypic evolution in the framework of the theory of adaptive dynamics. We show that a higher birth rate cannot compensate for a lower intrinsic lifetime reproduction ratio. Speed difference alone, without resource competition or different dispersal scale, does not lead to co-existence via a competition–colonization trade-off. Co-existence and evolutionary branching become possible only when resource competition, with reduced competition between the populations, is introduced. There is a convergent stable singular point in the strategy space. The singular strategy is an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) below a critical strength of resource competition. Above this threshold, the singular strategy is no longer an ESS and evolutionary branching occurs. This is the first demonstration of evolutionary branching on a lattice. We compare the behaviour of the spatial simulation to its mean-field and pair approximation counterparts. This comparison demonstrates that spatiality and limited dispersal reduce the possibility of evolutionary branching, in addition to that of co-existence. We interpret this phenomenon based on the partial spatial segregation between the competing strategies.

Keywords: adaptive dynamics, contact process, evolutionary branching, interacting particle system, limited dispersal.

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