Effects of resource competition on evolution and adaptive radiation

Abstract

The entanglement of population dynamics, evolution, and adaptive radiation for species competing for resources is studied. For resource harvesting, we modify the model used in Tikhonov and Monasson (Phys. Rev. Lett. 118:048103, 2017), and introduce new resource contest principles. We realistically implement the effects of beneficial and deleterious mutations on the coefficients in the equations governing the population dynamics and consider the emergence of reproductive isolation. The proposed model is shown to be in agreement with the competitive exclusion principle and no vacant niche principle. We establish a mechanism that contributes to preventing the accumulation of irreversible deleterious mutations: competition between recently diverged species/subpopulations. The proposed model is applicable for descriptions of more complex systems. In case of many constants in time resources, one observes very rapid specialization, a feature not reproducible by the common model.