Stochastic Evolutionary Demography under a Fluctuating Optimum Phenotype.

ABSTRACT: Many natural populations exhibit temporal fluctuations in abundance that are consistent with external forcing by a randomly changing environment. As fitness emerges from an interaction between the phenotype and the environment, such demographic fluctuations probably include a substantial contribution from fluctuating phenotypic selection. We study the stochastic population dynamics of a population exposed to random (plus possibly directional) changes in the optimum phenotype for a quantitative trait that evolves in response to this moving optimum. We derive simple analytical predictions for the distribution of log population size over time both transiently and at stationarity under Gompertz density regulation. These predictions are well matched by population- and individual-based simulatio

SUBMITTER: Chevin LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5958996 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature