Abstract
The eco-evolutionary dynamics of dispersal are recognised as key in determining the responses of populations to environmental changes. Here, by developing a novel modelling approach, we show that predators are likely to have evolved to emigrate more often and become more selective over their destination patch when their prey species exhibit spatio-temporally complex dynamics. We additionally demonstrate that the cost of dispersal can vary substantially across space and time. Perhaps as a consequence of current environmental change, many key prey species are currently exhibiting major shifts in their spatio-temporal dynamics. By exploring similar shifts in silico, we predict that predator populations will be most vulnerable when prey dynamics shift from stable to complex. The more sophisticated dispersal rules, and greater variance therein, that evolve under complex dynamics will enable persistence across a broader range of prey dynamics than the rules which evolve under relatively stable prey conditions.
Highlights
Dispersal is fundamental to a species’ ability to exploit its environment, influencing spatial population dynamics and gene flow [1]
The majority of theory on the evolution of dispersal has focussed on understanding how individuals of a single species behave in response to their environment and the density of conspecifics [6,7,8,9,10] Whilst earlier theoretical work focussed almost exclusively on modelling the evolution of emigration propensities, in recent years there has been a rapid move towards including greater detail and, in particular, increased attention has been given to modelling the transfer and settlement phases of dispersal [11]
A number of interesting studies have explored the evolution of dispersal within the context of trophic interactions [12,13,14,15,16]: typically these models have assumed either global dispersal or local dispersal and they have mostly focussed on understanding the evolution of emigration rates of either prey or predators in systems where the dynamics of prey and predator are interdependent
Summary
Dispersal is fundamental to a species’ ability to exploit its environment, influencing spatial population dynamics and gene flow [1]. We will use a spatially-extended, time-delayed discretetime Ricker equation to explore the impact of spatio-temporal variability in prey resources on dispersal evolution and resulting population dynamics in a predator species. Its magnitude is drawn from a normal distribution with zero mean and variance = 0.04, but the mutation is applied to the logit-transformed gene value so that the resulting genetic dispersal probability is constrained to be between 0 and 1.0 Extending upon this standard framework to explore more complex and realistic behaviours including condition-dependent settling rules, we adapt the model such that predators can evolve a flexible strategy whereby they can step through multiple cells during dispersal (no constraints on direction were applied), assessing each one and deciding whether to settle in it. We allowed the predator population 20 generations to adapt to the new conditions and repopulate the landscape and collected data on both the predator population abundance and on the mean dispersal rules of the predators during the 10 generations
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