Abstract
Environmental stochasticity and climate affect outcomes in evolutionary games, which can thereby affect biological diversity. Our maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of replicator dynamics for morph frequency data from control (25 years) and three experimentally perturbed populations (14 years) of side-blotched lizards yield a 3 × 3 payoff matrix in the generalized Rock-Paper-Scissors family; it has intransitive best replies, and each strategy is its own worst reply. ML estimates indicate significant interactive effects of density and temperature on morph frequency. Implied dynamics feature a powerful interior attractor and recover (for the first time) observed 4-5 year oscillations. Our evolutionary experiment on morph frequency confirms that oscillations are driven by frequency dependent selection, but climate entrains the cycles across the perturbed and control populations within 10 generations. Applying the model across the species range, we find that climate also accounts for morph fixation and mating system diversity, suggesting climate may similarly impact ecosystem diversity.
Highlights
Frequency dependent selection occurs when biological fitness depends on relative prevalence of alternative strategies
We estimated color allele frequency for the Orange World (OW), Yellow World (YW), and Blue World (BW) in 1999 from the predicted distribution of color alleles in progeny, because they were produced from controlled laboratory crosses [5]
Color expression begins in early March as males establish territories and peaks in early April, but the four locales are slightly out of breeding synchrony, with expression of color initiated first in OW, Main World (MW), BW, and YW
Summary
Frequency dependent selection occurs when biological fitness depends on relative prevalence of alternative strategies. A famous example occurs among throat-color morphs of sideblotched lizards, where despotic orange defeats cooperative blue, which defeats sneaker yellow, which defeats orange, in rock-paper-scissors (RPS) cycles [1]. The basic idea is to summarize the fitness impact of morph j on morph i in a n × n payoff matrix W = ((Wij))i,j = 1,. Do we get RPS cycles when we take a broader view of fitness? In this paper we exploit a novel experimentally perturbed data set and new statistical techniques to re-examine payoff matrices and morph dynamics among side-blotched lizards.
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