Adaptive ecology in variable environment

Informations

Funding country

Hungary

Acronym

-

URL

http://niche.elte.hu

Start date

1/1/2005

End date

12/31/2008

Budget

21,088 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

The proposed work is based on a concept which attempts to generalise and prove the classical picture of competition theory in a well-defined sense: Limiting similarity is the condition of the kind of coexistence which robust against the change of the external parameters. This concept is in close relationship with adaptive dynamics (which is the general theory of frequency-dependent selection) and with adaptive speciation, the essence of which is the ecology-induced way of generation of a new species. In a non-equilibrium word, the question of coexistence should be posed for the whole area of distribution and for the long time-scale, instead of locally in space and time. On this spatio-temporal scales we ask - Which species have a place in the non-equilibrium word? - What kind of selection regime is generated by the non-equilibrium ecology? Studied on the right scale, the 'limiting similarity' structure of niche segregation remains valid for the non-equilibrium word. Therefore, the evolutionarily meaningful notion of competition within/for a niche regains validity. In relation with the general concept of coexistence, we reinvestigate the mathematical basis of adaptive dynamics. It is a direct consequence of this ecological word-view that selection pressure for speciation emerges under ecologically interpretable circumstances. It is debated whether this effect is strong enough to really generate a new, properly isolated, species.