Developmental stability and fitness: the evidence is not quite so clear
Article Abstract:
Much of the data touted to support a positive relationship between developmental stability and various fitness components fail to do so. Such failure is traced to a lack of focus on the relationships being investigated. Many of the studies cited are ambivalent and do not offer any conclusive evidence. The use of a vote-counting procedure to assess whether there is a clear relationship between developmental stability and fitness is invalid, as it failed to reject the null hypothesis that, on average, half of the studies will show an effect in the expected direction.
Publication Name: The American Naturalist
Subject: Earth sciences
ISSN: 0003-0147
Year: 1998
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Chaos in a noisy world: new methods and evidence from time-series analysis
Article Abstract:
Time-series models based on stability and degree of predictability enable quantification and detection of chaos in randomly perturbed population-dynamic systems. The response surface method can be applied to data sets with less population, while the feedforward neural networks help estimate chaos in greater data sets. The Lyapunov exponent and the relative strength of exogenous endogenous factors exhibit a positive correlation and characterize chaos.
Publication Name: The American Naturalist
Subject: Earth sciences
ISSN: 0003-0147
Year: 1995
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Updating Gillespie with controlled chaos
Article Abstract:
Chaos theory, in combination with Gillespie's notion that offspring variance decreases fitness in natural selection, suggests higher moments of the distribution of offspring numbers can also affect the course of evolution. The effect of these higher moments allows phenotypes capable of controlling their chaotic dynamics to have an advantage over the uncontrolled, transforming a chaotic situation into a state of stable equilibrium.
Publication Name: The American Naturalist
Subject: Earth sciences
ISSN: 0003-0147
Year: 1995
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
- Abstracts: Null models and fish communities: evidence of non-random patterns. Morphological assortment and the assembly of communities of introduced passeriforms on oceanic islands: Tahiti versus Oahu
- Abstracts: Can the solar cycle and climate synchronize the snowshoe hare cycle in Canada? Evidence from tree rings and ice cores
- Abstracts: Open-system magma chamber process in the Freetown Complex of Sierra Leone: evidence from Zone 3. Pterosaur fossils from the Cretaceous of Chile: evidence for a pterosaur colony on an inland desert plain
- Abstracts: On expected lifetimes of small-bodied and large-bodied species of birds on islands. Co-occurrence of morphologically similar species of stream fishes