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Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction
Organisms often exhibit behavioral or phenotypic diversity to improve population fitness in the face of environmental variability. When each behavior or phenotype is individually maladaptive, alternating between these losing strategies can counter-intuitively result in population persistence–an outc...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5319843/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28084993 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.21673 |
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author | Tan, Zhi Xuan Cheong, Kang Hao |
author_facet | Tan, Zhi Xuan Cheong, Kang Hao |
author_sort | Tan, Zhi Xuan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Organisms often exhibit behavioral or phenotypic diversity to improve population fitness in the face of environmental variability. When each behavior or phenotype is individually maladaptive, alternating between these losing strategies can counter-intuitively result in population persistence–an outcome similar to the Parrondo’s paradox. Instead of the capital or history dependence that characterize traditional Parrondo games, most ecological models which exhibit such paradoxical behavior depend on the presence of exogenous environmental variation. Here we present a population model that exhibits Parrondo’s paradox through capital and history-dependent dynamics. Two sub-populations comprise our model: nomads, who live independently without competition or cooperation, and colonists, who engage in competition, cooperation, and long-term habitat destruction. Nomads and colonists may alternate behaviors in response to changes in the colonial habitat. Even when nomadism and colonialism individually lead to extinction, switching between these strategies at the appropriate moments can paradoxically enable both population persistence and long-term growth. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5319843 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53198432017-02-27 Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction Tan, Zhi Xuan Cheong, Kang Hao eLife Computational and Systems Biology Organisms often exhibit behavioral or phenotypic diversity to improve population fitness in the face of environmental variability. When each behavior or phenotype is individually maladaptive, alternating between these losing strategies can counter-intuitively result in population persistence–an outcome similar to the Parrondo’s paradox. Instead of the capital or history dependence that characterize traditional Parrondo games, most ecological models which exhibit such paradoxical behavior depend on the presence of exogenous environmental variation. Here we present a population model that exhibits Parrondo’s paradox through capital and history-dependent dynamics. Two sub-populations comprise our model: nomads, who live independently without competition or cooperation, and colonists, who engage in competition, cooperation, and long-term habitat destruction. Nomads and colonists may alternate behaviors in response to changes in the colonial habitat. Even when nomadism and colonialism individually lead to extinction, switching between these strategies at the appropriate moments can paradoxically enable both population persistence and long-term growth. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2017-01-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5319843/ /pubmed/28084993 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.21673 Text en © 2017, Tan and Cheong https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Computational and Systems Biology Tan, Zhi Xuan Cheong, Kang Hao Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction |
title | Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction |
title_full | Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction |
title_fullStr | Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction |
title_full_unstemmed | Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction |
title_short | Nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction |
title_sort | nomadic-colonial life strategies enable paradoxical survival and growth despite habitat destruction |
topic | Computational and Systems Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5319843/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28084993 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.21673 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT tanzhixuan nomadiccoloniallifestrategiesenableparadoxicalsurvivalandgrowthdespitehabitatdestruction AT cheongkanghao nomadiccoloniallifestrategiesenableparadoxicalsurvivalandgrowthdespitehabitatdestruction |