Growth or Reproduction: Emergence of an Evolutionary Optimal Strategy

TL;DR

This paper presents an agent-based model demonstrating how competing strategies in resource-limited ecosystems evolve towards an optimal balance, revealing a power-law distribution linked to resource availability.

Contribution

It introduces a novel agent-based model that shows the emergence of an optimal evolutionary strategy based on resource constraints, applicable to ecological and social systems.

Findings

Emergent optimal strategy depends on resource availability

Resource usage follows a power-law distribution

Model applicable to ecological and social systems

Abstract

Modern ecology has re-emphasized the need for a quantitative understanding of the original 'survival of the fittest theme' based on analyzis of the intricate trade-offs between competing evolutionary strategies that characterize the evolution of life. This is key to the understanding of species coexistence and ecosystem diversity under the omnipresent constraint of limited resources. In this work we propose an agent based model replicating a community of interacting individuals, e.g. plants in a forest, where all are competing for the same finite amount of resources and each competitor is characterized by a specific growth-reproduction strategy. We show that such an evolution dynamics drives the system towards a stationary state characterized by an emergent optimal strategy, which in turn depends on the amount of available resources the ecosystem can rely on. We find that the share of resources used by individuals is power-law distributed with an exponent directly related to the optimal strategy. The model can be further generalized to devise optimal strategies in social and economical interacting systems dynamics.