Spontaneous genetic clustering in populations of competing organisms

Abstract

We introduce and analyse an individual-based evolutionary model, in which a population of genetically diverse organisms compete with each other for limited resources. Through theoretical analysis and stochastic simulations, we show that the model exhibits a pattern-forming instability which is highly amplified by the effects of demographic noise, leading to the spontaneous formation of genotypic clusters. This mechanism supports the thesis that stochasticity has a central role in the formation and coherence of species.

9 pages, 3 figures, 2 appendices

References in corpus (1)

• Species clustering in competitive Lotka-Volterra models

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Stationary solutions for metapopulation Moran models with mutation and selection
• A framework for analyzing ecological trait-based models in multi-dimensional niche spaces
• Stochastic pattern formation and spontaneous polarisation: the linear noise approximation and beyond