Mathematical Models of Dynamics and Evolution in Structured Populations

观察到的自然种群的变化和进化与相关生物的生活史及其对环境变化的反应密切相关。环境可以驱动诸如出生、死亡和生长等重要事件速率的时间变化。它们还可能导致资源限制，这在依赖于密度的人口反应中表现出来。本提案旨在探讨这两种环境影响对动态和进化的影响。研究的一个方向是分析不断变化的环境，因为它们影响生物发育的速度，以及生物生命周期内繁殖的分布，特别关注重复繁殖和发育延迟。这将是第一次系统地分析环境格局对复杂生命周期演变的影响，并将探索在环境不可预测地随时间变化的情况下，人口增长与生命周期各组成部分之间的关系。第二个研究方向侧重于资源限制和密度对形成人口变化动态的影响；特别是，这种影响可以驱动人口数量和构成的周期性变化的方式。这些影响已经在实验人群中进行了研究，该理论将应用于这些数据。

The observed changes and evolution of natural populations are closely influenced by the life history of the organisms involved, and their responses to environmental change. Environments can drive temporal changes in the rates of vital events such as birth, death and growth. They can also result in resource limitations that reveal themselves in density-dependent population responses. This proposal aims to explore the consequences of both of these kinds of environmental effects for dynamics and evolution. One direction of study is the analysis of changing environments as they affect the rate at which organisms develop, and the distribution of reproduction over the lifespan of organisms, with special attention to repeated reproduction and developmental delays. This will be the first systematic analysis of the effect of environmental pattern on the evolution of complex life cycles, and will also explore the relationship between population growth and the components of the life cycle, when the environment is changing unpredictably over time. A second direction of study focuses on resource limitation and density effects in shaping the dynamics of population change; in particular, the ways in which such effects can drive cyclical change in population numbers and composition. These effects have been studied in experimental populations, and the theory will be applied to these data.