The impact of environmental fluctuation on species diversity is studied with
a model of the evolutionary ecology of microorganisms. We show that
environmental fluctuation induces evolutionary branching and assures the
consequential coexistence of multiple species. Pairwise invasibility analysis
is applied to illustrate the speciation process. We also discuss how
fluctuation affects species diversity.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Letter

A White

CS Holling

CV Rao

D Tilman

E Litchman

GF Gause

HL Smith

J Huisman

J Monod

JH Connell

JM Cushing

K Kaneko

K Kovárová-Kovar

M Eigen

M Huston

Mark Isalan

Masashi Tachikawa

P Chesson

R Armstrong

R MacArthur

SAH Geritz

T Shibata

T Yanagida

U Dieckmann

PLoS ONE

English

arXiv

Crossref

Fluctuation Induces Evolutionary Branching in a Mathematical Model of Ecosystems

Ecological systems are always subjected to various environmental fluctuations. They evolve under these fluctuations and the resulting systems are robust against them. The diversity in ecological systems is also acquired through the evolution. How do the fluctuations affect the evolutionary processes? Do the fluctuations have direct impact on the species diversity in ecological systems? In the present paper, we investigate the relation between the environmental fluctuation and the evolution of species diversity with a mathematical model of evolutionary ecology. In the model, individual organisms compete for a single restricted resource and the temporal fluctuation in the resource supply is introduced as the environmental fluctuation. The evolutionary process is represented by the mutational change of genotypes which determines their resource utilization strategies. We found that when the environmental state is switched form static to fluctuating conditions, the initial closely related population distributed around the genotype adapted for the static environment is destabilized and divided into two groups in the genotype space; i.e., the evolutionary branching is induced by the environmental fluctuation. The consequent multiple species structures is evolutionary stable at the presence of the fluctuation. We perform the evolutionary invasion analysis for the phenomena and illustrate the mechanisms of the branchings. The results indicate a novel process of increasing the species diversity via evolutionary branching, and the analysis reveals the mechanisms of the branching process as the response to the environmental fluctuation. The robustness of the evolutionary process is also discussed

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