Evolution of resource specialisation in competitive metacommunities.

ABSTRACT: Spatial environmental heterogeneity coupled with dispersal can promote ecological persistence of diverse metacommunities. Does this premise hold when metacommunities evolve? Using a two-resource competition model, we studied the evolution of resource-uptake specialisation as a function of resource type (substitutable to essential) and shape of the trade-off between resource uptake affinities (generalist- to specialist-favouring). In spatially homogeneous environments, evolutionarily stable coexistence of consumers is only possible for sufficiently substitutable resources and specialist-favouring trade-offs. Remarkably, these same conditions yield comparatively low diversity in heterogeneous environments, because they promote sympatric evolution of two opposite resource specialists that, to

SUBMITTER: Wickman J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6852178 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature