Quantitative genetics and population dynamics

This study examines the dynamics of a competition and a host-parasite model in which the interactions are determined by quantitative characters. Both models are extensions of one-dimensional difference equations that can exhibit complicated dynamics. Compared to these basic models, the phenotypic variability given by the quantitative characters reduces the size of the density fluctuations in asexual populations. With sexual reproduction, which is described by modeling the genetics of the quantitative character explicitly with many haploid loci that determine the character additively, this reduction in fitness variance is magnified. Moreover, quantitative genetics can induce simple dynamics. For example, the sexual population can have a two-cycle when the asexual system is chaotic. This paper discusses the consequences for the evolution of sex. The higher mean growth rate implied by the lower fitness variance in sexual populations is an advantage that can overcome a twofold intrinsic growth rate of asexuals. The advantage is bigger when the asexual population contains only a subset of the phenotypes present in the sexual population, which conforms with the tangled bank theory for the evolution of sex and shows that tangled bank effects also occur in host-parasite systems. The results suggest that explicitly describing the genetics of a quantitative character leads to more flexible models than the usual assumption of normal character distributions, and therefore to a better understanding of the character's impact on population dynamics.