| dc.description.abstract | The behavior of animals is influenced by genetic and environmental factors as well as the interactions between the two. It is also influenced by the behavior of others. The Producer-Scrounger model is a classic model that looks at two behaviors in an inverse frequency relationship to predict population level frequencies of tactic usage. Previous studies have conflated learning and non-learning plastic strategies, leading to confusion and a lack of comparison for all possible strategy types.
Here, we utilized an agent based model to follow individuals in populations through time, observing genetic changes, strategy choices and levels of producers and scroungers. This model uses a deterministic correlation function to cause variability in the environment in a predictable fashion through the modification of the producers bonus, as well as utilizing an underlying liability reaction norm framework to treat the act of producing or scrounging as a threshold trait. We ran scenarios that allowed and prevented plasticity from evolving. These scenarios varied in how the environment changed over time and how fast.
We confirm that the type of environmental fluctuation and its speed has an impact on the types of strategies evolved in a population. In addition, we test learning strategists in an environment with conditional plastic, non-plastic mixed, and pure strategies and confirm that learning strategies can become fixed in a population and are the most successful and numerous in an environment that allows for plasticity to evolve. | |
