Figure 2.
Binary-splitting reproductive strategies are uniquely optimal under the effects of size. (a) A diagram of perturbations at size n = 3. Grey dots are the conditions for neutral population growth χn = 1. Blue dots are the perturbed values at size 3 with different strength. (b) The growth rates of populations with different reproductive strategies under perturbations at size n = 3. The asterisk shows the unaffected reproductive strategies which continue to perform equally well. (c) The distribution of χn that promote the reproductive strategy 3 + 1 (in blue) among all samples (in grey). χn are drawn randomly from a uniform distribution, where χn = 0.5, …, 1.5. A sequence of [χ1, …, χ7] is randomly chosen at a time and the optimal reproductive strategy for it is identified. Ten thousand such sequences are investigated in total. Most notable, perturbations promoting 3 + 1 tend to have small values of χ3. (d) The frequency of observed optimal reproductive strategies under size effects. (e) The reproductive strategies that have been investigated for the maturity size N ≤ 8. The reproductive strategies highlighted in bold blue letters are the optimal ones under a single perturbation n = 1, …, 7.