The evolution of juvenile-adult interactions in populations structured in age and space

Lion, Sébastien and Minus van Baalen

Theoretical Population Biology, 2009, vol. 76, issue 2, 132-145

Abstract: We study the evolution of a spatially structured population with two age classes using spatial moment equations. In the model, adults can either help juveniles by increasing their survival, or adopt a cannibalistic behaviour and consume juveniles. While cannibalism is the sole evolutionary outcome when the population is well-mixed, both cannibalism and parental care can be evolutionarily stable if the population is viscous. Our analysis allows us to make two main technical points. First, we present a method to define invasion fitness in class-structured viscous populations, which allows us to apply adaptive dynamics methodology. Second, we show that ordinary pair approximation introduces an important quantitative bias in the evolutionary model, even on random networks. We propose a correction to the ordinary pair approximation that yields quantitative accuracy, and discuss how the bias associated with this approach is precisely what allows us to identify subtle aspects associated with the evolutionary dynamics of spatially structured populations.

Keywords: Moment equations; Invasion fitness; Age structure; Spatial structure; Pair approximation; Moment closure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580909000793
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:76:y:2009:i:2:p:132-145

DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2009.05.005

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical Population Biology is currently edited by Jeremy Van Cleve

More articles in Theoretical Population Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().