Diversification of predators in multi-trophic communities: A trait-based theoretical approach

• Main Author: Ayala Lopez, Julio Antonio
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Lunds universitet/Examensarbeten i bioinformatik 2022
• Subjects: Biology and Life Sciences; Arctic; Galapagos; Tundra
• Online Access: http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9102714

One of the main challenges in ecology and evolutionary biology is to understand how biodiversity emerges and is maintained, given the complexity of ecological and evolutionary processes combined. Understanding how multi-trophic interactions occur from a theoretical perspective is highly relevant for our understanding of diversification in complex ecosystems. Here, I explore how the diversification of predators is driven by predator-prey interactions in an eco-evolutionary context. I evaluate the effect of ecological and reproductive characteristics of predators on their diversification by using a trait-based and individual-based model. In terms of predator ecological characteristics, I find that higher feeding efficiency and intermediate predator niche widths facilitate diversification through higher population sizes and ecological opportunity respectively. In terms of reproduction, asexual reproduction facilitates predator diversification when compared to sexual reproduction, while the latter can hinder diversification unless assortative mating is high. Finally, high predator mutation rates allow for diversification, but only in combination with the characteristics mentioned before. The model thus improves our mechanistic understanding of the diversification of trophic communities, and it enables us to further study how eco-evolutionary interactions can allow biodiversity to arise. How does evolution across the food web result in diversification? A big question in evolutionary biology is what causes life on Earth to diversify. From the mosses and grasses in the arctic tundra to the exotic birds of paradise in Oceania, life comes in all shapes, sizes, and colours. Much of biodiversity is the product of adaptive radiations, the process by which a single species rapidly evolves into many species that adapt in response to newly available resources or changes in their environment. An example of this process is the famous Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos islands, which all descended from a single species and ...