TY - JOUR
T1 - A Continuum Formulation of the Ideal Free Distribution and Its Implications for Population Dynamics
AU - Kshatriya, Mrigesh
AU - Cosner, Chris
N1 - Funding Information:
1Research partially supported by NSF Grant DMS 99-73017.
PY - 2002/5
Y1 - 2002/5
N2 - The ideal free distribution is a description of how organisms would distribute themselves in space if they were free to move so as to maximize fitness. The standard formulation of the ideal free distribution envisions the environment as consisting of finitely many discrete habitats. In this paper, a version of the ideal free distribution is derived for the case where the environment is a continuum. The continuum formulation allows computation of average fitness at the population level by taking account of both local fitness and the spatial distribution of the population. An example shows that the average fitness may have a different form than the local fitness; in particular, if local fitness is described by a logistic equation at each location, the average fitness may obey the θ-logistic equation of F. J. Ayala et al. (1973, Theor. Popul. Biol. 4, 331-356). This gives a mechanistic derivation of the θ-logistic equation.
AB - The ideal free distribution is a description of how organisms would distribute themselves in space if they were free to move so as to maximize fitness. The standard formulation of the ideal free distribution envisions the environment as consisting of finitely many discrete habitats. In this paper, a version of the ideal free distribution is derived for the case where the environment is a continuum. The continuum formulation allows computation of average fitness at the population level by taking account of both local fitness and the spatial distribution of the population. An example shows that the average fitness may have a different form than the local fitness; in particular, if local fitness is described by a logistic equation at each location, the average fitness may obey the θ-logistic equation of F. J. Ayala et al. (1973, Theor. Popul. Biol. 4, 331-356). This gives a mechanistic derivation of the θ-logistic equation.
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U2 - 10.1006/tpbi.2002.1573
DO - 10.1006/tpbi.2002.1573
M3 - Article
C2 - 12027614
AN - SCOPUS:0036580407
VL - 61
SP - 277
EP - 284
JO - Theoretical Population Biology
JF - Theoretical Population Biology
SN - 0040-5809
IS - 3
ER -