Demographic noise can lead to the spontaneous formation of species

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that demographic noise can spontaneously induce species formation in phenotypically diverse populations, even when all organisms have equal fitness, contrasting with previous models that neglected such noise.

Contribution

It introduces the impact of demographic noise into models of species emergence, revealing spontaneous species formation under conditions previously thought to prevent it.

Findings

Demographic noise causes spontaneous species formation.

Two regimes identified: weak-noise with fluctuations, strong-noise with spontaneous clustering.

Species can form even when all organisms have equal fitness.

Abstract

When a collection of phenotypically diverse organisms compete with each other for limited resources, with competition being strongest amongst the most similar, the population can evolve into tightly localised clusters. This process can be thought of as a simple model of the emergence of species. Past studies have neglected the effects of demographic noise and studied the population on a macroscopic scale, where species formation is found to depend upon the shape of the curve describing the decline of competition strength with phenotypic distance. In the following, we will show how including the effects of demographic noise leads to a radically different conclusion. Two situations are identified: a weak-noise regime in which the population exhibits patterns of fluctuation around the macroscopic description, and a strong-noise regime where species appear spontaneously even in the case that all organisms have equal fitness.