Abstract
Evolutionary changes in natural populations are often so fast that the evolutionary dynamics may influence ecological population dynamics and vice versa. Here we construct an eco-evolutionary model for dispersal by combining a stochastic patch occupancy metapopulation model with a model for changes in the frequency of fast-dispersing individuals in local populations. We test the model using data on allelic variation in the gene phosphoglucose isomerase (Pgi), which is strongly associated with dispersal rate in the Glanville fritillary butterfly. Population-specific measures of immigration and extinction rates and the frequency of fast-dispersing individuals among the immigrants explained 40% of spatial variation in Pgi allele frequency among 97 local populations. The model clarifies the roles of founder events and gene flow in dispersal evolution and resolves a controversy in the literature about the consequences of habitat loss and fragmentation on the evolution of dispersal.
Highlights
Population biologists are increasingly concluding that microevolutionary changes are often so fast in natural populations (Thompson 1998; Hendry & Kinnison 1999; Saccheri & Hanski 2006) that the evolutionary dynamics may influence ecological population dynamics and vice versa
Using the frequency of the C allele in Pgi_111 as a proxy of the frequency of fast-dispersing individuals in a local population, and the surrogate measures C~i ; E~i and q~iimmig for immigration rate, extinction rate and the mean dispersal phenotype among the immigrants, respectively, we fitted the nonlinear regression model defined by Eq
A problem with the above approach is that Eq (13) is very complex and it may fail because the structural model assumptions do not correspond accurately enough with the real dynamics
Summary
Population biologists are increasingly concluding that microevolutionary changes are often so fast in natural populations (Thompson 1998; Hendry & Kinnison 1999; Saccheri & Hanski 2006) that the evolutionary dynamics may influence ecological population dynamics and vice versa. Such coupled ecological and evolutionary dynamics, or eco-evolutionary dynamics for short (Pelletier et al 2009), have been analysed with models in the context of, for instance, the dynamics of speciesÕ range boundaries (Kirkpatrick & Barton 1997), the evolution of speciesÕ niches (Kawecki 1995) and predator-prey dynamics (Abrams & Matsuda 1997). Dispersal may often exhibit complex eco-evolutionary dynamics in which demographic dynamics influence microevolutionary dynamics and vice versa
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