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

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 nutriti

SUBMITTER: Senior AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4376532 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature