Mate limitation causes sexes to coevolve towards more similar dispersal kernels
Authored by Christoph M Meier, Jostein Starrfelt, Hanna Kokko
Date Published: 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2011.19487.x
Sponsors:
Australian Research Council (ARC)
Platforms:
C
MATLAB
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Sex-specific dispersal behavior has been documented in a wide range of
different species. Avoidance of inbreeding and kin competition as well
as different benefits of philopatry have been invoked as explanations
for these patterns. All of these factors have, however, focused on
explaining why dispersal behavior differs between the sexes. In this
paper, we make the case that dispersal causes an increase in spatial
variability in the sex ratio which can reduce the local availability of
mates, and thus feed back to influence the evolution of sex-specific
dispersal and lead to more, rather than less, similar dispersal behavior
in the sexes. We investigate this mechanism in two different models, first in a conceptually simple case showing why the coevolutionary
effect arises, second in an individual-based model where we model a
population in explicit space with dispersal implemented as dispersal
kernels. While our mechanism is not expected to completely remove
sex-bias in dispersal, it can act alongside other selection pressures to
reduce such biases. Our model thus shows that dispersal of one sex can
have an effect on the selective pressures on the opposite sex, without
implementing inbreeding avoidance or differential benefits or costs of
dispersal.
Tags
Competition
Evolution
sexual selection
Spatially explicit
Habitats
Demographic stochasticity
Mating systems
Biased dispersal
Reproductive asynchrony
Bird populations