Natal dispersal and senescence.
The potential existence of natal dispersal strategies depending on parental age has been suggested by Hamilton and May [Hamilton, W. D. & May, R. M. (1977) Nature 269, 578-581] for organisms whose survival rates decline with age. When competition between parent and offspring is strong, any individual should disperse a smaller fraction of its offspring when it ages. Here, we verify their verbal prediction. First, we determine the evolutionarily stable dispersal strategy conditional on parental age, associated with a particular senescence curve. We show that such a conditional dispersal strategy should evolve independently from the genotype controlling the offspring dispersal behavior. Second, studying a population of common lizards, we provide empirical evidence of a relation between dispersal of female offspring and maternal senescence, in agreement with our theoretical predictions.
Ronce
O
O
Institut des Sciences de L'Evolution, Université de Montpellier II, France.
Clobert
J
J
Massot
M
M
D000375:Aging; D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical