Evolutionary games, climate and the generation of diversity

<div><p>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.</p></div

Simplex and states in all worlds.

<p>Black points and lines are time series <i>S</i>(<i>t</i>), while blue points are the Nash equilibrium for .</p

Estimates of the (<i>W</i>, <i>β</i>_<i>ν</i>, <i>β</i>_<i>τ</i>) model (with bootstrapped standard errors in parentheses).

<p>Matrix entries are for strategies [1, 2, 3] = [<i>o</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>y</i>]. In Panel (a) the covariates are suppressed, and the estimated effective sample size is . The remaining panels show estimates of the full model, for which .</p

Geographic variation in the orange, blue and yellow strategy types and hours of restriction during juvenile emergence.

<p>Geographic variation in the orange, blue and yellow strategy types and hours of restriction during juvenile emergence.</p