Diffusion dynamics on the coexistence subspace in a stochastic evolutionary game.

Abstract

Frequency-dependent selection reflects the interaction between different species as they battle for limited resources in their environment. In a stochastic evolutionary game the species relative fitnesses guides the evolutionary dynamics with fluctuations due to random drift. A selection advantage which depends on a changing environment will introduce additional possibilities for the dynamics. We analyse a simple model in which a random environment allows competing species to coexist for a long time before a fixation of a single species happens. In our analysis we use stability in a linear combination of competing species to approximate the stochastic dynamics of the system by a diffusion on a one dimensional co-existence region. Our method significantly simplifies approximating the probability of first extinction and its expected time, and demonstrates a rigorous model reduction technique for evaluating quasistationary properties of stochastic evolutionary dynamics.