Population Consequences of Parent-Offspring Competition: An Individual-Based Model

Abstract

The article compares different versions of individual-based models of single population dynamics with overlapping generations with results of the model of population with non-overlapping generations. In all models, various versions of global competition for common resources and their unequal partitioning between competing individuals are analysed, i.e., when juveniles and adult individuals compete for the same resources, when juveniles and adult individuals use different resources, and a case called mother’s care. The article analyses the relationship between individual variability and population persistence measured by the time of population extinction. Persistence of a population is increased by all forms of competition between individuals not weakened by any environmental factors (e.g. diversification of resources of competing individuals) or factors arising from evolutionary history of the species (e.g. mother’s care) and related in an appropriate way to the mechanism shaping individual variability in the population. Any form of weakening competition leading to decreasing individual variability will adversely affect the persistence of the population. However, differences between versions of the model are not very big.