Using evolutionary computation methods to support analytical models for the evolution and maintenance of conditional strategies in chthamalus anisopoma

Abstract

Biologists have developed models to explain why different environmentally induced morphs of the same organism exist over time. Such conditional strategies are a common form of adaptation to variable environments, whereby an environmental cue allows some individuals to respond to the cue and develop into a morph that is different from the morph of individuals that do not receive the cue. Recently, these efforts have resulted in two different analytical models that give somewhat different predictions. Here we apply evolutionary computation methods to test the two analytical models. The results bear a remarkable similarity to the results of one of the two analytical models. The paper that follows presents the details of a biological application involving snails and barnacles (that occur naturally in two different morphs), moving then to an explanation of two competing mathematical models of the application. Finally, the interdisciplinary paper, which coordinates three separate research projects of a biologist, a mathematician and a computer scientist, describes the evolutionary computation methods used to support one of the two competing analytical models.