Project description

Evolution leads to gradual adaptation to different ecological conditions and diversification in terms of genetic variation and speciation. Knowledge about how ecological communities or food webs are created will increase our understanding of the function of extant communities and to what kind of perturbations they may be sensitive.

The aim of this project is to investigate possible interactions between evolution and population interactions such as competition and predation, but also processes like invasions and extinctions. What ecological circumstances allow for high diversity communities to evolve? To what kind of perturbations is an evolving community most sensitive - continuous environmental fluctuations, catastrophes, or sudden environmental change? Will a community ever reach a mature, Evolutionary Stable State? If not, how can we describe the expected community structure and its development? Can we expect periods of intensive speciation followed by major extinctions á la punctuated equilibrium or will some kind of stationary state be reached in which the number of species fluctuates around a given mean?

Under the framework of adaptive dynamics ecological interactions such as inter- and intraspecific competition, predation etc. becomes a natural part of the evolutionary dynamical model. It is therefore employed as a major tool in order to analyse speciation and adaptation. The adaptive dynamics models also explicitly express population dynamics, why environmental stochasticity, population extinctions and invasions are readily included and analysed.

Members

Jacob Johansson, Lena Storlind, Per Lundberg, Jörgen Ripa

Related publications

Ripa, J., Storlind, L., Lundberg, P. and Brown. J. S. 2009. Niche coevolution in consumer–resource communities. Evolutionary Ecology Research (in press)

Address: Theoretical Ecology, Ecology Building,  223 62 Lund , Sweden
Phone: +46 (0)46 2220000, Fax: +46 (0)46 2224716
Webmasters: Jörgen Ripa & Fredrik Haas