Abstract
We analyze the evolution of a multidimensional quantitative trait in a class structured focal species interacting with other species in a wider metacommunity. The evolutionary dynamics in the focal species as well as the ecological dynamics of the whole metacommunity is described as a continuous-time process with birth, physiological development, dispersal, and death given as rates that can depend on the state of the whole metacommunity and can thus accommodate complex local (community) and global (metacommunity) environmental feedbacks (owing to inter- and intra-specific interactions) as well as stochastic fluctuations. For the focal species, we derive a fitness measure for a mutant allele affecting class-specific trait expression. Using classical results from singular perturbation theory, we provide a detailed proof that if the effect of the mutation on phenotypic expression is small (“weak selection”), the large system of dynamical equations needed to describe selection on the mutant allele in the metacommunity can be reduced to a single ordinary differential equation on the arithmetic mean mutant allele frequency that is of constant sign. The mutant will therefore either die out or will out-compete the ancestral (wild)-type. Moreover, the directional selection coefficient driving arithmetic mean allele frequency can be expressed as an inclusive fitness effect calculated from the resident metacommunity alone, and depends, as expected, on individual fitness differentials, relatedness, and reproductive values. This formalizes the Darwinian process of gradual evolution driven by mutation and selection in spatially and class structured metacommunities.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
