Competition, trait variance dynamics, and the evolution of a species' range

DOI10.1007/S11538-022-00990-ZzbMATH Open1486.92138arXiv2104.05923OpenAlexW4210356858WikidataQ113188762 ScholiaQ113188762MaRDI QIDQ2113597FDOQ2113597

Judith R. Miller, Farshad Shirani

Publication date: 14 March 2022

Published in: Bulletin of Mathematical Biology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Geographic ranges of communities of species evolve in response to environmental, ecological, and evolutionary forces. Understanding the effects of these forces on species' range dynamics is a major goal of spatial ecology. Previous mathematical models have jointly captured the dynamic changes in species' population distributions and the selective evolution of fitness-related phenotypic traits in the presence of an environmental gradient. These models inevitably include some unrealistic assumptions, and biologically reasonable ranges of values for their parameters are not easy to specify. As a result, simulations of the seminal models of this type can lead to markedly different conclusions about the behavior of such populations, including the possibility of maladaptation setting stable range boundaries. Here, we harmonize such results by developing and simulating a continuum model of range evolution in a community of species that interact competitively while diffusing over an environmental gradient. Our model extends existing models by incorporating both competition and freely changing intraspecific trait variance. Simulations of this model predict a spatial profile of species' trait variance that is consistent with experimental measurements available in the literature. Moreover, they reaffirm interspecific competition as an effective factor in limiting species' ranges, even when trait variance is not artificially constrained. These theoretical results can inform the design of, as yet rare, empirical studies to clarify the evolutionary causes of range stabilization.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.05923

zbMATH Keywords

adaptive evolutioninterspecific competitionevolutionary partial differential equationsecological geneticsrange dynamics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Problems related to evolution (92D15) Ecology (92D40) PDEs in connection with biology, chemistry and other natural sciences (35Q92)

Cites Work

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Cited In (3)

• Competition may determine the diversity of transposable elements
• Quasi-stationary distribution of a prey-predator model driven by demographic stochasticity
• The shape of the competition and carrying capacity kernels affects the likelihood of disruptive selection

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