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Science, Vol 305, Issue 5680, 84-86 , 2 July 2004
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1096307]
Adaptive Radiation from Resource Competition in Digital Organisms
Stephanie S. Chow,1* Claus O. Wilke,1,2* Charles Ofria,3 Richard E.
Lenski,4 Christoph Adami1,2{dagger}
Species richness often peaks at intermediate productivity and decreases
as resources become more or less abundant. The mechanisms that produce
this pattern are not completely known, but several previous studies have
suggested environmental heterogeneity as a cause. In experiments with
evolving digital organisms and populations of fixed size, maximum
species richness emerges at intermediate productivity, even in a
spatially homogeneous environment, owing to frequency-dependent
selection to exploit an influx of mixed resources. A diverse pool of
limiting resources is sufficient to cause adaptive radiation, which is
manifest by the origin and maintenance of phenotypically and
phylogenetically distinct groups of organisms.
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