Speaker
Description
Co-Author: Charlotte de Vries
Classical population genetics has this concept called "fitness." It is a scalar measure and in that theory, it serves three functions. It encapsulates, in a single number, all of the demographic processes of survival and reproduction that determine the transmission of genes. It also implies a projection of population size and composition over time, based on those demographic processes. Finally, it provides conditions for the coexistence or exclusion of genotypes. Analyses of structured populations have searched for a similar scalar measure that will serve these three functions (lambda, r, R0, reproductive value). Success has been limited. We will try to improve the situation. We show a framework that incorporates genetic processes into stage-classified matrix population models, and permits direct calculation of all three of these functions. It becomes clear that fitness is an operator, not a number, and that the three classical functions of fitness can be derived from this operator. However, unlike the basic population genetic case, no single number satisfies all three conditions. Our framework can help to integrate ecological and evolutionary processes.
