Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 14: Evolutionary Game Theory III (joint SOE, BP)
BP 14.7: Talk
Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 15:45–16:00, H44
Sexual and asexual reproduction in iteroparous species — •Yixian Song1, Barbara Drossel1, and Stefan Scheu2 — 1Institut für Festkörperphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Deutschland — 2J.F. Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Goettingen, Germany
The evolution of sex has been discussed intensively since Charles Darwin. By considering explicitely the important fact of limited and structured resources, we explore the conditions for the maintenance of sex in spite of the cost of producing males. In this model, asexual species win over sexual species only when mortality rates are large, resources regrow quickly, many different genotypes are allowed to coexist at the same place, or when resource diversity is small. Here, we modify the limited structured resource model of Scheu and Drossel (Proc. Roy. Soc. B. 2007) such that it applies to iteroparous species, which reproduce more than once during their life. We therefore include age and size of individuals into the model, with the corresponding metabolic rate, mortality and fecundity. Metabolic rate per biomass and mortality decrease with increasing body weight, while the fecundity increases. Therefore, phenotypes with smaller size at maturity have a higher mass dependent metabolic rate, a higher mortality, and a lower fecundity. However, they reach maturity earlier with the same growth rate and increase thereby the chance of survival until reproduction. We determine the optimum size at reproduction and the optimum offspring size under different environmental conditions, and we evaluate the parameter range for which sexual reproduction wins over asexual reproduction.