Stochasticity enhances the gaining of bet-hedging strategies in contact-process-like dynamics

Hidalgo, Jorge; Pigolotti, Simone; Muñoz, Miguel A.

doi:10.1103/physreve.91.032114

Cited by 14 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…We found that, contrarily to 287 the well-mixed case, bet-hedging can be convenient in expanding populations. This 288 result complements the study in [52] for a fixed habitat and supports the view that communities can be optimal depending on the parameters. On the contrary, for fast 292 environmental changes, the optimal population always adopts a unique strategy.…”

supporting

confidence: 75%

“…Note that, in this model, the frequency of environmental change does not play a role, 122 as far as it is finite [52]. The physical reason can be understood from the right-hand 123 side of Eq.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Few studies have explored the benefits of bet-hedging in spatially structured 35 ecosystems [52,53].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This means that no bet-hedging 113 strategy is possible in this model in the well-mixed case [55]. finite switching rates among strategies [32,57], or c) a delta-correlated environment [52]. 118 Any of these ingredients can lead to nonlinearities in the average exponential growth 119 rate, therefore opening the way for a non-trivial optimal strategy.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Bet-hedging strategies in expanding populations

Martín

Muñoz

Pigolotti

2018

Preprint

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In ecology, species can mitigate their extinction risks in uncertain environments by diversifying individual phenotypes. This observation is quantified by the theory of bet-hedging, which provides a reason for the degree of phenotypic diversity observed even in clonal populations. The theory of bet-hedging in well-mixed populations is rather well developed. However, many species underwent range expansions during their evolutionary history, and the importance of phenotypic diversity in such scenarios still needs to be understood. In this paper, we develop a theory of bet-hedging for populations colonizing new, unknown environments that fluctuate either in space or time. In this case, we find that bet-hedging is a more favorable strategy than in well-mixed populations. For slow rates of variation, temporal and spatial fluctuations lead to different outcomes. In spatially fluctuating environments, bet-hedging is favored compared to temporally fluctuating environments. In the limit of frequent environmental variation, no opportunity for bet-hedging exists, regardless of the nature of the environmental fluctuations. For the same model, bet-hedging is never an advantageous strategy in the well-mixed case, supporting the view that range expansions strongly promote diversification. These conclusions are robust against stochasticity induced by finite population sizes. Our findings shed light on the importance of phenotypic heterogeneity in range expansions, paving the way to novel approaches to understand how biodiversity emerges and is maintained. Author summaryEcological populations are often exposed to unpredictable and variable environmental 1 conditions. A number of strategies have evolved to cope with such uncertainty. One of 2 them is stochastic phenotypic switching, by which some individuals in the community 3 are enabled to tackle adverse conditions, even at the price of reducing overall growth in 4 the short term. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of these "bet-hedging" 5 strategies for a population in the process of colonizing new territory. We show that 6 bet-hedging is more advantageous when the environment varies spatially rather than 7 temporally, and infrequently rather than frequently. 8 Introduction 9The dynamics and evolutionary history of many biological species, from bacteria to 10 humans, are characterized by invasions and expansions into new territory. The 11 September 19, 2018 1/15 effectiveness of such expansions is crucial in determining the ecological range and 12 therefore the success of a species. A large body of observational [1, 2] and 13 experimental [3-6] literature indicates that evolution and selection of species undergoing 14 range expansions can be dramatically different from that of other species resident in a 15 fixed habitat. Theoretical studies of range expansions based on the Fisher-Kolmogorov 16 equation [7, 8] or variants [9, 10] also support this idea. Adaptive dispersal strategies [2] 17and small population sizes at the edges of expanding fronts [11,12] are among the m...

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supporting

confidence: 75%

mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Few studies have explored the benefits of bet-hedging in spatially structured 35 ecosystems [52,53].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bet-hedging strategies in expanding populations

Martín

Muñoz

Pigolotti

2018

Preprint

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“…However, deterministic approaches neglect the effect of fluctuations, and these are now acknowledged to be both inherent and essential to the organization of communities of living systems [8]. On the one hand, the discreteness and finiteness of populations lead to demographic noise; which has been shown to be responsible of a wealth of non-trivial phenomena such as the emergence of complex statistical patterns in neutral communities [9,10], quasi-periodic oscillations in prey-predator systems [11], species formation [12], and others [13][14][15]. On the other hand, populations are strongly affected by fluctuations in external conditions [16,17], which in most of the cases are highly unpredictable.…”

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confidence: 99%

Impact of environmental colored noise in single-species population dynamics

2017

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Variability on the external conditions has important consequences for the dynamics and organization of biological systems, and, in many cases, the characteristic timescale of environmental changes as well as their correlations play a fundamental role in the way living systems adapt and respond to it. A proper mathematical approach to understand population dynamic, thus, requires of approaches more refined than e.g. simple white-noise approximations. To shed further light onto this problem, in this paper we propose a unifying framework based on different analytical and numerical tools available to deal with "colored" environmental noise. In particular, we employ a "unified colored noise approximation" to map the original problem into an effective one with white noise, and then we apply a standard path integral approach to gain analytical understanding. For the sake of specificity, we present our approach using as a guideline a variation of the contact process -which can also be seen as a birth-death process of the Malthus-Verhulst class-where the propagation/birth rate varies stochastically in time. Our approach allows us to tackle in a systematic manner some of the relevant questions concerning population dynamics under environmental variability such as, for instance, determining the stationary population density, establishing the conditions under which a population may become extinct, and estimating extinction times. More in general, we put the focus on the emerging phase diagram and its possible phase transitions, underlying how these are affected by the presence of environmental noise time-correlations.

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Long‐term persistence of agricultural pest insects by risk‐spreading dispersal

Gavina

Aoki

Ichinose

et al. 2018

Ecological Research

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Insects are the most diverse organisms on earth consisting of more than 900 thousand species. However, only few of them are considered agricultural pests. Life history traits such as high fecundity, fast population growth, and high dispersal ability have been used to characterize agricultural pest insects. However, many other non‐pest insects also share these traits, which indicates that there has not been a decisive condition characterizing agricultural pest insects. Agricultural habitats are risky and ephemeral to pests because of pest control and harvesting. The usual arithmetic mean fitness cannot be used to measure the persistence of these pests, because the maximal mean fitness is achieved only when they exhibit no dispersal, but that leads to immediate extinction. Using a geometric mean fitness model, we propose a quantitative measure of long‐term reproductive success for agricultural pest insects. By using this approach, we can evaluate the trade‐off between long‐distance dispersal and high reproduction correctly and estimate the condition for the long‐term persistence of pest insects in agricultural habitats. We discuss some general perspectives of pest control from the proposed characterization.

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Stochasticity enhances the gaining of bet-hedging strategies in contact-process-like dynamics

Cited by 14 publications

References 42 publications

Bet-hedging strategies in expanding populations

Bet-hedging strategies in expanding populations

Impact of environmental colored noise in single-species population dynamics

Long‐term persistence of agricultural pest insects by risk‐spreading dispersal

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