Adaptive Diversification Due to Predator-Prey Interactions
Adaptive Diversification Due to Predator-Prey Interactions
This chapter discusses adaptive diversification due to predator–prey interactions. It has long been recognized that consumption, that is, predation, can not only exert strong selection pressure on the consumer, but also on the consumed species. However, predation has traditionally received much less attention than competition as a cause for the origin and maintenance of diversity. By using adaptive dynamics theory as well as individual-based models, the chapter then illustrates that adaptive diversification in prey species due to frequency-dependent predator–prey interactions is a theoretically plausible scenario. It also describes conditions for diversification due to predator–prey interactions in classical Lotka–Volterra models, which requires analysis of coevolutionary dynamics between two interacting species, and hence of adaptive dynamics in two-dimensional phenotype spaces.
Keywords: adaptive diversification, predator–prey interactions, predation, adaptive dynamics theory, individual-based models, Lotka–Volterra models, coevolutionary dynamics