Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Time-dependent fitness effects can drive bet-hedging populations extinct

View ORCID ProfileEric Libby, View ORCID ProfileWilliam Ratcliff
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/054007
Eric Libby
1Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Eric Libby
  • For correspondence: elibby@santafe.edu
William Ratcliff
2School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for William Ratcliff
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

To survive unpredictable environmental change, many organisms adopt bet-hedging strategies that trade short-term population growth for long-term fitness benefits. Because the benefits of bet-hedging may manifest over long time intervals, bet-hedging strategies may be out-competed by strategies maximizing short-term fitness. Here, we investigate the interplay between two drivers of selection, environmental fluctuations and competition for limited resources, on different bet-hedging strategies. We consider an environment with frequent disasters that switch between which phenotypes they affect in a temporally-correlated fashion. We determine how organisms that stochastically switch between phenotypes at different rates fare in both competition and survival. When disasters are correlated in time, the best strategy for competition is among the worst for survival. Since the time scales over which the two agents of selection act are significantly different, environmental fluctuations and resource competition act in opposition and lead populations to evolve diversification strategies that ultimately drive them extinct.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted May 18, 2016.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Time-dependent fitness effects can drive bet-hedging populations extinct
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Time-dependent fitness effects can drive bet-hedging populations extinct
Eric Libby, William Ratcliff
bioRxiv 054007; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/054007
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Time-dependent fitness effects can drive bet-hedging populations extinct
Eric Libby, William Ratcliff
bioRxiv 054007; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/054007

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4680)
  • Biochemistry (10352)
  • Bioengineering (7670)
  • Bioinformatics (26325)
  • Biophysics (13521)
  • Cancer Biology (10682)
  • Cell Biology (15429)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (8496)
  • Ecology (12818)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (16848)
  • Genetics (11391)
  • Genomics (15474)
  • Immunology (10609)
  • Microbiology (25203)
  • Molecular Biology (10218)
  • Neuroscience (54447)
  • Paleontology (401)
  • Pathology (1668)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2897)
  • Physiology (4341)
  • Plant Biology (9242)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1586)
  • Synthetic Biology (2557)
  • Systems Biology (6777)
  • Zoology (1463)