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Article: Natural Selection on Fecundity Variance in Subdivided Populations: Kin Selection Meets Bet Hedging
- Article from:
- Genetics
- Article date:
- May 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Genetics Society of America May 2007. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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ABSTRACT
In a series of seminal articles in 1974, 1975, and 1977, J. H. Gillespie challenged the notion that the "fittest" individuals are those that produce on average the highest number of offspring. He showed that in small populations, the variance in fecundity can determine fitness as much as mean fecundity. One likely reason why Gillespie's concept of within-generation bet hedging has been largely ignored is the general consensus that natural populations are of large size. As a consequence, essentially no work has investigated the role of the fecundity variance on the evolutionary stable state of life-history strategies. While typically large, natural populations also tend to be ...