The role of ecological processes in the evolution of social traits is increasingly recognized. Here, we explore, using a general theoretical model and experiments with bacteria, the joint effects of disturbance frequency and resource supply on the evolution of cooperative biofilm formation. Our results demonstrate that cooperation tends to peak at intermediate frequencies of disturbance but tha...

Predation is a fundamental ecological and evolutionary process that varies in space, and the avoidance o f predation risk is o f central importance in foraging theory. While there has been a recent growth of approaches to spatially model predation risk, these approaches lack an adequate mechanistic framework that can be applied to real landscapes. In this paper we show how predation risk can be...

Natural resource managers have used natural variability concepts since the early 1960s and are increasingly relying on these concepts to maintain biological diversity, to restore ecosystems that have been severely altered, and as benchmarks for assessing anthropogenic change. Management use of natural variability relies on two concepts: that past conditions and processes provide context and gui...

The availability of different resources in the environment can affect the outcomes of evolutionary diversification. A unimodal distribution of diversity with resource supply has been widely observed and explained previously in the context of selection acting in a spatially heterogeneous environment. Here, we propose an alternative mechanism to explain the relationship between resource supply an...

Ecological diversification presents an enduring puzzle: how do novel ecological strategies evolve in organisms that are already adapted to their ecological niche? Most attempts to answer this question posit a primary role for genetic drift, which could carry populations through or around fitness "valleys" representing maladaptive intermediate phenotypes between alternative niches. Sexual select...

Predation is a fundamental ecological and evolutionary process that varies in space, and the avoidance of predation risk is of central importance in foraging theory. While there has been a recent growth of approaches to spatially model predation risk, these approaches lack an adequate mechanistic framework that can be applied to real landscapes. In this paper we show how predation risk can be d...

When evaluating the ecological value of land use within a landscape, investigators typically rely on measures of habitat selection and habitat quality. Traditional measures of habitat selection and habitat quality require data from resource intensive study designs (e.g., telemetry, mark–recapture, or multi–season point counts). Often, managers must evaluate ecological value despite only having ...

Our current understanding of sympatric speciation is that it occurs primarily through disruptive selection on ecological genes driven by competition, followed by reproductive isolation through reinforcement-like selection against inferior intermediates/heterozygotes. Our evolutionary model of selection on resource recognition and preference traits suggests a new mechanism for sympatric speciati...

The potential use of functional evolutionary models and mechanistic ecological models as predictive tools in fisheries ecology is discussed. Evolution by natural selection is a force that leads to ecological adaptations of the individuals in the populations. By mechanistic modelling of the sense organs, we may model how individuals perceive their environment, and by life history theory we may p...

support vector machine (svm) was used to analyze the occurrence of roach in flemish stream basins (belgium). several habitat and physico?chemical variables were used as inputs for the model development. the biotic variable merely consisted of abundance data which was used for predicting presence/absence of roach. genetic algorithm (ga) was combined with svm in order to select the most important...