Evolving nutritional strategies in the presence of competition: a geometric agent-based model

PLoS Comput Biol. 2015 Mar 27;11(3):e1004111. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004111. eCollection 2015 Mar.

Abstract

Access to nutrients is a key factor governing development, reproduction and ultimately fitness. Within social groups, contest-competition can fundamentally affect nutrient access, potentially leading to reproductive asymmetry among individuals. Previously, agent-based models have been combined with the Geometric Framework of nutrition to provide insight into how nutrition and social interactions affect one another. Here, we expand this modelling approach by incorporating evolutionary algorithms to explore how contest-competition over nutrient acquisition might affect the evolution of animal nutritional strategies. Specifically, we model tolerance of nutrient excesses and deficits when ingesting nutritionally imbalanced foods, which we term 'nutritional latitude'; a higher degree of nutritional latitude constitutes a higher tolerance of nutritional excess and deficit. Our results indicate that a transition between two alternative strategies occurs at moderate to high levels of competition. When competition is low, individuals display a low level of nutritional latitude and regularly switch foods in search of an optimum. When food is scarce and contest-competition is intense, high nutritional latitude appears optimal, and individuals continue to consume an imbalanced food for longer periods before attempting to switch to an alternative. However, the relative balance of nutrients within available foods also strongly influences at what levels of competition, if any, transitions between these two strategies occur. Our models imply that competition combined with reproductive skew in social groups can play a role in the evolution of diet breadth. We discuss how the integration of agent-based, nutritional and evolutionary modelling may be applied in future studies to further understand the evolution of nutritional strategies across social and ecological contexts.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Competitive Behavior / physiology*
  • Computational Biology
  • Feeding Behavior / physiology*
  • Female
  • Insecta
  • Male
  • Models, Biological*
  • Nutritional Physiological Phenomena / physiology*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Program. Additionally, SS was supported by an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship, which funded AS. JB is supported by the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (ARC FT110100082) and Discovery Projects programs (ARC DP1030101670). ML is supported by grants from IDEX - University of Toulouse and the Fyssen Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.