| Go back | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
The conditional strategy provides a powerful explanation for the persistence of alternative behavioral tactics in a population. The conditional strategy more fully accommodates properties of many biological systems than traditional game theory models of behavioral diversity. In particular, the conditional strategy allows for tactic inheritance when there are differences of tactic fitness, a situation that is expected (in a game theory context) to drive the tactic that yields the highest fitness to fixation. In many biological systems negative maternal or paternal effects further complicate the inheritance of condition and, hence, the inheritance of alternative behavioral tactics. Indeed, inheritance of condition in such systems may result in the alternation of tactics across generations. In this paper, we show that the conditional strategy is robust to these effects on progeny condition. There is a unique and stable proportion of tactics under standard inheritance and these two important properties of the conditional strategy hold even if negative maternal or paternal effects on progeny condition cause tactics to alternate across generations. However, the dynamics of tactic proportions pursuant to a perturbation of the equilibrium tactic proportions depends on the form of tactic inheritance. We apply our theoretical results to a population of smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) in which negative paternal effects dictate individual condition and cause an alternation in age at first reproduction across generations. This shows how the model of the conditional strategy can be used to gain insight into tactic dynamics in situations where some of the model parameters are difficult or impossible to measure empirically. | ||||||||||||
Wiegmann, D. D. and M. Morris. In press. Search behavior and mate choice. Invited paper for special issue of Recent Advances in Experimental and Theoretical Biology. Wiegmann, D. D., and T. Nguyen. In press. Mating system and demographic constraints on the opportunity for sexual selection. Theoretical Population Biology. | ||||||||||||
| Go back | ||||||||||||
MyBGSU
Email
Search
Directory
Academics
Admissions
The Arts
Athletics
Library
A to Z Links
Bowling Green State University