François Massol

Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Montpellier

Joint evolution of dispersal and the allocation of dispersal cost in heterogeneous landscapes

[When and where]

Dispersal is an important trait affecting many processes in ecology and evolution, such as the evolution of local adaptation, speciation, extinction risk, invasion success and species coexistence. Understanding the evolution of dispersal is thus of paramount importance to understand these processes at a higher level.

Based on a simple, spatially implicit, adaptive dynamics-based model for the evolution of dispersal in heterogeneous environments, I will present some results on the evolution of dispersal when the cost of dispersal is supported by the offspring vs. the mother and on the joint evolution of dispersal and an allocation trait representing the proportion of dispersal cost supported by the offspring.

At constant total cost of dispersal, the singular dispersal strategy is decreased by allocating more to maternal rather than offspring costs, while ESS/branching conditions are not affected by the allocation of costs. Depending on whether the trade-off between maternal and offspring costs is more or less convex than the trade-off that would keep total cost constant, I find that the joint evolution of dispersal with the allocation of costs increase or decrease the potential for evolutionary branching.

francois.massol@univ-lille1.fr

Invited talk Mini-symposium 8

Updated July 5, 2015, by Minus