Evolutionary invasion analysis of behavioral plasticity
If resource (forage) availability can indeed have a significant effect
on the movement behavior, then the question is whether the movement
strategy corresponds with an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS). We
therefore generated a pairwise invasibility plot (PIP, Fig. 6), by
performing an evolutionary invasibility analysis (see Materials
and Methods ) to determine whether the optimal value is a long-term
outcome of competition selection, or just be exploited by free-riding
strategies (38). The PIP reveals that diatom movement strategy of
diatoms observed in our experiments is not only an evolutionarily stable
strategy but also convergence stable. Here, we did not observe a
branching to occur when the parameters of the model are changed in the
evolutionary dynamics. In addition, integrating the effect of multiple
attractors into evolutionary strategies remain a fascinating topic for
future research. Our model provides a universal way to understand the
ecologically relevant functions of movement behavior from the
perspective of foraging theory.