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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Coevolution Of Hosts And Pathogens In The Presence Of Multiple Types Of Hosts, Evan J. Mitchell
Coevolution Of Hosts And Pathogens In The Presence Of Multiple Types Of Hosts, Evan J. Mitchell
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
How will hosts and pathogens coevolve in response to multiple types of hosts? I study this question from three different perspectives. First, I model a scenario in which hosts are categorized as female or male. Hosts invest resources in maintaining their immune system at a cost to their reproductive success, while pathogens face a trade-off between transmission and duration of infection. Importantly, female hosts are also able to vertically transmit an infection to their newborn offspring. The main result is that as the rate of vertical transmission increases, female hosts will have a greater incentive to pay the cost to …
Effects Of Gene-Environment Interactions On The Evolution Of Social Behaviours, Vonica J. Flear
Effects Of Gene-Environment Interactions On The Evolution Of Social Behaviours, Vonica J. Flear
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Inclusive fitness models in sociobiology emphasize the importance of relatedness, R, and synergy, S when exploring the evolution of social behaviours. Very few models explicitly consider ‘role’, or environmental stimuli, influencing the expression of behaviours, and none consider genetic-environment interactions where genotype predisposes individuals to certain roles. I propose a third key variable for inclusive fitness models, Q, which describes the overlooked potential bias in the genetic composition of individuals exposed to an environmental stimulus – here referred to as ‘role’. I describe a model built from Price’s formula which can be presented in a ‘Hamilton’s Rule’ format. …
A Model-Based Test Of The Efficacy Of A Simple Rule For Predicting Adaptive Sex Allocation, Joshua D. Dunn
A Model-Based Test Of The Efficacy Of A Simple Rule For Predicting Adaptive Sex Allocation, Joshua D. Dunn
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
The division of resources between male and female reproductive function is defined as sex allocation. The usefulness of simple rules to predict adaptive sex-allocation decisions has been a contentious topic. Simple rules are difficult to apply when the biological details of the life cycle are complex, as is the case in many vertebrates. We build a mathematical-computational model to investigate the usefulness of a simple rule that predicts adaptive sex-allocation decisions. We find that the simple rule is a better predictor of adaptive sex-allocation decisions when more features of an organism's life cycle are assumed to evolve. Even though the …