title: Evolutionary trade-offs at two time-scales: competition versus persistence.
abstract: The evolution of many natural systems is complicated due to dynamics at a mixture of time-scales. This is especially true when there is a trade-off between large reproductive rates and long-term persistence; such behaviour is frequently observed in disease models. In this paper, a simple partial differential equation model is formulated which describes the evolutionary dynamics of two disease strains in a metapopulation: one strain is a better short-term competitor; the other has greater persistence. By considering the behaviour of means and higher-order moments, analytical expressions for the evolutionary behaviour are produced in the case when the two strains are phenotypically close.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK. matt@zoo.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Keeling
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D006801:Humans; D008457:Measles / Q000453:epidemiology; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics; D013997:Time Factors