Darwinian selection for self-limiting populations

✍ Scribed by Mary B. Williams

• Book ID: 104155257
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1975
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 933 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1016/s0022-5193(75)80090-7

✦ Synopsis

The rarity of Malthusian overexploitation has long puzzled naturalists. Nicholson has given an important proximate explanation of how population size is limited, but his discussion of density governing traits does not tackle the ultimate question of how populations acquired these traits which prevent overexploitation. This paper shows that Darwinian theory can explain the evolution of density governing limitation mechanisms which prevent overexploitation; they are a predictable by-product of selection for adaptation to the early growth phase of a population with recurrent population crashes. In this situation Darwinian selection, instead of maximizing the number of offspring of the ultimately favored allele, maximizes the number of its descendants in the comparable portion of the next growth cycle.