Competition among small individuals hinders adaptive radiation despite ecological opportunity.

ABSTRACT: Ontogenetic diet shifts, where individuals change their resource use during development, are the rule rather than the exception in the animal world. Here, we aim to understand how such changes in diet during development affect the conditions for an adaptive radiation in the presence of ecological opportunity. We use a size-structured consumer-resource model and the adaptive dynamics approach to study the ecological conditions for speciation. We assume that small individuals all feed on a shared resource. Large individuals, on the other hand, have access to multiple food sources on which they can specialize. We find that competition among small individuals can hinder an adaptive radiation to unfold, despite plenty of ecological opportunity for large individuals. When small individuals exper

SUBMITTER: Ten Brink H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8941390 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature