Dynamic Analysis of Bet-Hedging Strategies as a Protection Mechanism against Environmental Fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a theoretical framework using Markov jump linear systems to analyze how biological populations employ bet-hedging strategies to survive environmental fluctuations, balancing short-term performance with long-term robustness.

Contribution

It presents a novel mathematical model for evaluating bet-hedging strategies under stochastic environmental changes, supported by numerical simulations.

Findings

Bet-hedging improves long-term survival probabilities.

The model quantifies trade-offs between short-term performance and robustness.

Numerical simulations validate the effectiveness of strategies under various conditions.

Abstract

In order to increase their robustness against environmental fluctuations, many biological populations have developed bet-hedging mechanisms in which the population `bets' against the presence of prolonged favorable environmental conditions by having a few individual behaving as if they sensed a threatening or stressful environment. As a result, the population (as a whole) increases its chances of surviving environmental fluctuations in the long term, while sacrificing short-term performance. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework, based on Markov jump linear systems, to model and evaluate the performance of bet-hedging strategies in the presence of stochastic fluctuations. We illustrate our results using numerical simulations.