Foundations of ecological and evolutionary change

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Duthie, A. Bradley, Luque, Victor J.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Duthie, A. Bradley
Luque, Victor J.
author_facet Duthie, A. Bradley
Luque, Victor J.
contents Biological evolution is realised through the same mechanisms of birth and death that underlie change in population density. The deep interdependence between ecology and evolution is well-established, and recent models focus on integrating eco-evolutionary dynamics to demonstrate how ecological and evolutionary processes interact and feed back upon each other. Nevertheless, a gap remains between the logical foundations of ecology and evolution. Population ecology and evolution have fundamental equations that define how the size of a population (ecology) and the average characteristic within a population (evolution) change over time. These fundamental equations are a complete and exact description of change for any closed population, but how they are formally linked remains unclear. We link the fundamental equations of population ecology and evolution with an equation that sums how individual characteristics interact with individual fitness in a population. From this equation, we derive the fundamental equations of population ecology and evolutionary biology (the Price equation). We thereby identify an overlooked bridge between ecology and biological evolution. Our unification formally recovers the equivalence between mean population growth rate and evolutionary fitness and links this change to ecosystem function. We outline how our framework can be used to further develop eco-evolutionary theory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_10766
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Foundations of ecological and evolutionary change
Duthie, A. Bradley
Luque, Victor J.
Populations and Evolution
Biological evolution is realised through the same mechanisms of birth and death that underlie change in population density. The deep interdependence between ecology and evolution is well-established, and recent models focus on integrating eco-evolutionary dynamics to demonstrate how ecological and evolutionary processes interact and feed back upon each other. Nevertheless, a gap remains between the logical foundations of ecology and evolution. Population ecology and evolution have fundamental equations that define how the size of a population (ecology) and the average characteristic within a population (evolution) change over time. These fundamental equations are a complete and exact description of change for any closed population, but how they are formally linked remains unclear. We link the fundamental equations of population ecology and evolution with an equation that sums how individual characteristics interact with individual fitness in a population. From this equation, we derive the fundamental equations of population ecology and evolutionary biology (the Price equation). We thereby identify an overlooked bridge between ecology and biological evolution. Our unification formally recovers the equivalence between mean population growth rate and evolutionary fitness and links this change to ecosystem function. We outline how our framework can be used to further develop eco-evolutionary theory.
title Foundations of ecological and evolutionary change
topic Populations and Evolution
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.10766