Frequency-dependent fitness induces multistability in coevolutionary dynamics

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Hinrich Arnoldt - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, University of Göttingen (Author)
  • Marc Timme - , Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (Author)
  • Stefan Grosskinsky - , University of Warwick (Author)

Abstract

Evolution is simultaneously driven by a number of processes such as mutation, competition and random sampling. Understanding which of these processes is dominating the collective evolutionary dynamics in dependence on system properties is a fundamental aim of theoretical research. Recent works quantitatively studied coevolutionary dynamics of competing species with a focus on linearly frequency-dependent interactions, derived from a gametheoretic viewpoint. However, several aspects of evolutionary dynamics, e.g. limited resources, may induce effectively nonlinear frequency dependencies. Here we study the impact of nonlinear frequency dependence on evolutionary dynamics in a model class that covers linear frequency dependence as a special case. We focus on the simplest non-trivial setting of two genotypes and analyse the co-action of nonlinear frequency dependence with asymmetric mutation rates. We find that their co-action may induce novel metastable states as well as stochastic switching dynamics between them. Our results reveal how the different mechanisms of mutation, selection and genetic drift contribute to the dynamics and the emergence of metastable states, suggesting that multistability is a generic feature in systems with frequency-dependent fitness.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3387-3396
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of the Royal Society interface
Volume9
Issue number77
Publication statusPublished - 7 Dec 2012
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

PubMed 22874094
ORCID /0000-0002-5956-3137/work/142242484

Keywords

Keywords

  • Dynamic fitness, Multistability, Population dynamics, Stochastic switching