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- English, Sinead, et al.
(författare)
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Adaptive use of information during growth can explain long-term effects of early life experiences
- 2016
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Ingår i: American Naturalist. - : University of Chicago Press. - 0003-0147 .- 1537-5323. ; 187:5, s. 620-632
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Development is a continuous process during which individuals gain information about their environment and adjust their phenotype accordingly. In many natural systems, individuals are particularly sensitive to early life experiences, even in the absence of later constraints on plasticity. Recent models have highlighted how the adaptive use of information can explain age-dependent plasticity. These models assume that information gain and phenotypic adjustments either cannot occur simultaneously or are completely independent. This assumption is not valid in the context of growth, where finding food results both in a size increase and learning about food availability. Here, we describe a simple model of growth to provide proof of principle that long-termeffects of early life experiences can arise through the coupled dynamics of information acquisition and phenotypic change in the absence of direct constraints on plasticity. The increase in reproductive value from gaining information and sensitivity of behavior to experiences declines across development. Early life experiences have longterm impacts on age of maturity, yet-due to compensatory changes in behavior-our model predicts no substantial effects on reproductive success. We discuss how the evolution of sensitive windows can be explained by experiences having short-term effects on informational and phenotypic states, which generate long-term effects on life-history decisions.
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| 2. |
- McNamara, John M., et al.
(författare)
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Environmental variability can select for optimism or pessimism
- 2011
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 14:1, s. 58-62
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose operational definitions of reproductive optimism and pessimism; optimism involves behaving in a way that gives too much weight (in terms of producing surviving offspring) to positive events, pessimism gives too much weight to negative events. Natural selection maximizes the long-term growth of a lineage rather than short-term measures such as numbers of offspring. Consequently, optimism or pessimism can be favoured by natural selection, even though such biases appear irrational from a short-term perspective. We investigate the evolution of optimism in a metapopulation. The circumstances of a patch change over time, independently of other patches. With sufficient dispersal between patches, stochasticity affects members of a lineage largely independently and optimism is favoured. With little dispersal, the temporal fluctuations of a patch affect many members similarly; pessimism is then favoured. Our results establish that the spatial and temporal structure of the environment is crucial in determining the direction of evolved biases. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.
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