If you're a student looking for comprehensive notes on optimality theory in evolutionary biology, then this is the perfect resource for you. These notes cover all the essential topics, including the cost-benefit model, the marginal value theorem, and optimal foraging behavior in animals.
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Optimality theory in evolutionary
biology
Date @February 6, 2023 4:00 PM
Class 🐡 MBIO317 - Behavioural Ecology
Type Lecture
Materials L04 Optimality DLE.pptx
Notes written
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Flashcards
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Summary -
Optimality theory in evolutionary biology examines the costs and benefits of behaviour's to
determine the optimal strategy that maximises fitness.
Optimality models generate hypotheses about the factors shaping behaviours evolution and
the link between behaviours like foraging, mating, and offspring number and fitness.
Though optimality theory has been criticised as unrealistic and too mathematically complex,
it provides insights into behaviours evolution and testable predictions.
The theory suggests evolution produces organisms well-adapted but not perfect, and optimal
behaviours depend on assumptions about constraints like travel time and diminishing returns.
Anomus Lizard - sit and wait
optimality modelling - looking at the benefits vs costs
Optimality theory in evolutionary biology - lecture contains:
natural selection and optimality
costs, benefits and optima
optimality models
Optimality theory in evolutionary biology 1
, economics of prey choice
patch residence time
what use is optimality theory?
criticisms of optimality
Why are we interested in optimality?
the whole idea is based around natural selection and adaptation
competition for resources should cause natural selection to select for efficiency
or rather it should eliminate the least efficient
“Optimality is the expects result of natural selection… for ever more efficient
organisms” - Perry & Pianka, 1997
The main currency of evolution is fitness
Optimality models usually assume the maximisation of indirect measures of fitness
e.g., energy intake rate, number of mates, etcs
but, how good is the correlation between these measures and fitness?
those with low intake rate will have low fitness and not be likely to have mates,
giving them low reproductive output
Costs, benefits and optima
cost-benefit model - energy intake
model
the type of model we would see
when an individual is foraging
initial benefit of rate of energy increase
is steep at the beginning but rate starts
to drop and the curve starts to flatten
off
there always becomes a point in which
the initial intake rate declines
Optimality theory in evolutionary biology 2
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