Coevolution of slow-fast populations: evolutionary sliding, evolutionary pseudo-equilibria and complex Red Queen dynamics

摘要

We study the interplay of ecological and evolutionary dynamics in communities composed of populationswith contrasting time-scales. In such communities, genetic variation of individual traits can causepopulation transitions between stationary and cyclic ecological regimes, hence abrupt variations in fitness.Such abrupt variations raise ridges in the adaptive landscape, where the populations are poised betweenequilibrium and cyclic coexistence and along which evolutionary trajectories can remain sliding for longtimes or halt at special points called evolutionary pseudo-equilibria. These novel phenomena should begeneric to all systems in which ecological interactions cause fitness to vary discontinuously. They aredemonstrated by the analysis of a predator–prey community, with one adaptive trait for each population.The eco-evolutionary dynamics of the system show a number of other distinctive features, includingevolutionary extinction and two forms of Red Queen dynamics. One of them is characterized byintermittent bouts of cyclic oscillations of the two populations.