The evolution of adaptive strategies to deal with variable environments
Conference Year
2023
Abstract
What do you do when the environment varies frequently and unpredictably? You can hedge your bets! In nature, there are two ways of being a bet-hedger. There are generalists that are not particularly good, but not particularly bad either in the various possible environments. Alternatively, individuals can hedge their bets by creating a phenotypically diverse set of offspring such that at least some of them will be fit no matter how the environment changes. We have created a simple computational model of adaptation in a variable environment and surprisingly, without any direct incentive, we observed the evolution of both strategies.
Primary Faculty Mentor Name
Melissa Pespeni
Status
Graduate
Student College
College of Arts and Sciences
Program/Major
Biology
Primary Research Category
Life Sciences
The evolution of adaptive strategies to deal with variable environments
What do you do when the environment varies frequently and unpredictably? You can hedge your bets! In nature, there are two ways of being a bet-hedger. There are generalists that are not particularly good, but not particularly bad either in the various possible environments. Alternatively, individuals can hedge their bets by creating a phenotypically diverse set of offspring such that at least some of them will be fit no matter how the environment changes. We have created a simple computational model of adaptation in a variable environment and surprisingly, without any direct incentive, we observed the evolution of both strategies.