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ENVIRONMENTAL PERTURBATIONS AND TRANSITIONS BETWEEN ECOLOGICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY EQUILIBRIA: AN ECO-EVOLUTIONARY FEEDBACK FRAMEWORK

View ORCID ProfileTim Coulson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/509067
Tim Coulson
1Department of Zoology, Mansfield Road, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, UK
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  • For correspondence: tim.coulson@zoo.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

I provide a general framework for linking ecology and evolution. I start from the fact that individuals require energy, trace molecules, water, and mates to survive and reproduce, and that phenotypic resource accrual traits determine an individual’s ability to detect and acquire these resources. Optimum resource accrual traits, and their values, are determined by the dynamics of resources, aspects of the environment that hinder resource detection and acquisition by imposing risks of mortality and reproductive failure, and the energetic costs of developing and maintaining the traits – part of an individual’s energy budget. These budgets also describe how individuals utilize energy by partitioning it into maintenance, development and/or reproduction at each age and size, age and size at sexual maturity, and the size and number of offspring produced at each reproductive event. The optimum energy budget is consequently determined by the optimum life history strategy that describes how resources are utilized to maximize fitness by trading off investments in maintenance, development, and reproductive output at each age and size. The optimum life history in turn determines body size. An eco-evolutionary feedback loop occurs when resource accrual traits evolve to impact the quality and quantity of resources that individuals accrue, resulting in a new optimum life history strategy and energy budget required to deliver it, a change in body size, and altered population dynamics that, in turn, impact the resource base. These feedback loops can be complex, but can be studied by examining the eco-evolutionary journey of communities from one equilibrium state to another following a perturbation to the environment.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Version 4 of this preprint has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Ecology (https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.ecology.100053)

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 26, 2020.
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ENVIRONMENTAL PERTURBATIONS AND TRANSITIONS BETWEEN ECOLOGICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY EQUILIBRIA: AN ECO-EVOLUTIONARY FEEDBACK FRAMEWORK
Tim Coulson
bioRxiv 509067; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/509067
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ENVIRONMENTAL PERTURBATIONS AND TRANSITIONS BETWEEN ECOLOGICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY EQUILIBRIA: AN ECO-EVOLUTIONARY FEEDBACK FRAMEWORK
Tim Coulson
bioRxiv 509067; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/509067

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