Evolution in spatial predator-prey models and the "prudent predator": The inadequacy of steady-state organism fitness and the concept of individual and group selection

C. Goodnight, E. Rauch, H. Sayama, M. A. M. De Aguiar, M. Baranger, Y. Bar-yam, Complexity 13, 5 (2008).

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Complexity

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Genes are inherited, but how about the environment? Children inherit many things from their parents, not only genes. New scientific results show that what a parent leaves to its children is important generally in evolution---and has implications for human survival in the future.

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Abstract

We review recent research which reveals: (1) how spatially distributed populations avoid overexploiting resources due to the local extinction of over-exploitative variants, and (2) how the
conventional understanding of evolutionary processes is violated by
spatial populations so that basic concepts, including fitness
assignment to individual organisms, are not applicable, and even kin
and group selection are unable to describe the mechanism by which
exploitative behavior is bounded. To understand these evolutionary
processes a broader view is needed of the properties of multiscale
spatiotemporal patterns in organism-environment interactions. We
discuss measures that quantify the effects of these interactions on
the evolution of a population, including multi-generational fitness
and the heritability of the environment.