Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-lrf7s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T20:55:20.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Optimization in Evolutionary Ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Robert C. Richardson
Robert C. Richardson*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Within evolutionary ecology, there is a substantial tradition treating natural selection as an optimizing agent tending to produce maximal adaptedness to the environment. This includes the work of Sewall Wright and R.A. Fisher, as well as a number of influential modern defenders such as G.C. Williams, J.R. Krebs, Richard Levins, Robert MacArthur, E.O. Wilson, and John Maynard Smith. In one widely deployed class of models, the phenotype or behavior of organisms is predicted on the basis of optimization principles, assuming ”… that the organisms’ preferences are related to evolutionary fitness and that the options more prefeaed must lead to greater survival and reproduction” (Real and Caraco 1986, 371-2). Optimality is measured by some “currency,” or what Richard Lewontin (1987) calls a “criterion scale,” providing an independent operational measure of fitness.

Type
Part I. Philosophy of Biology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1994 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1994 , 1994 , pp. 13 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (DIR-8921837), and the Taft Faculty Committee of the University of Cincinnati. I am indebted to many people for discussion of this work at one time or another, including John Beatty, Robert Brandon, Richard Burian, W. R. Carter, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Gauker, Donald Gustafson, Lawrence Jost, W. E. Morris, Elliott Sober, Miriam Solomon and William Wimsatt.

References

Brandon, R.N. (1990), Adaptation and Environment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Charnov, E.L. (1976a), “Optimal Foraging: the Marginal Value Theorem,” Theoretical Population Biology 9: 129-36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charnov, E.L. (1976b), “Optimal Foraging: Attack Strategy of a Mantid,” American Naturalist UO: 141-51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charnov, E.L. and Orians, G.H. (1973), “Optimal Foraging: Some Theoretical Explorations,” unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Dennett, D.C. (1983), “Intentional Systems in Cognitive Ethology: The ‘Panglossian Paradigm’ Defended,” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6: 75–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobzhansky, T. (1957), “Mendelian Populations as Genetic Systems,”Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in Quantitative Biology. Population Studies: Animal Ecology and Demography 22: 385-93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, J.H. (1992), “Is Evolution an Optimizing Process?” draft version.Google Scholar
Gillespie, R.G., and Caraco, T. 1987. “Risk Sensitive Foraging Strategies in Two Spider Populations,” Ecology 68: 887-99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, S.J. and Lewontin, R.C. (1979), “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B, 205:581–598.Google Scholar
Krebs, J.R., and McCleery, R.H. (1984), “Optimization in Behavioral Ecology,” in Krebs, J. R. and Davies, N. D. (eds.), Behavioral Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach. Sunderland: Sinauer, pp. 91–121.Google Scholar
Krebs, J.R., Erichsen, J.T., Webber, M.I., and Charnov, E.L. (1977), “Optimal Prey Selection in the Great Tit (Pants major),” Animal Behavior 25: 30–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lack, D. (1954), The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R.C. (1987), “The Shape of Optimality,” in Dupré, J., J. (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality. Cambridge: M. I. T. Press & Bradford Books, pp. 151–160.Google Scholar
MacArthur, R.H. (1957), “On the Relative Abundance of Bird Species,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 43: 293-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacArthur, R.H. (1960), “On the Relative Abundance of Species,” American Naturalist 94:25–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacArthur, R.H. (1972), Geographical Ecology: Patterns in the Distribution of Species. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
MacArthur, R.H., and Pianca, E.R. (1966), “On Optimal Use of a Patchy Environment,” American Naturalist 100: 60-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. (1978), “Optimization Theory in Evolution,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 9: 31–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, S.K., and Beatty, J.H. (1979), “The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness,” Philosophy of Science 46: 263–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers, J.P. (1983), “Commentary,” in Brush, A. H. and Clark, G. A. (eds.), Perspectives in Ornithology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 216-21.Google Scholar
Nur, N. (1987), “Alternative Reproductive Tactics in Birds: Individual Variation in Clutch Size,” in Bateson, P.P.G. and Klopfer, P.H. (eds.), Perspectives in Ethology. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 49–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oster, G.F., and Wilson, E.O. (1978), Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Parker, G.A., and Smith, J.M. (1990), “Optimality Theory in Evolutionary Biology,” Nature 348: 27–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perrins, CM. (1965), “Population Fluctuations and Clutch-Size in the Great Tit, Parus major L.” Journal of Animal Ecology 34: 601-47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Real, L.A., and Caraco, T. (1986), “Risk and Foraging in Stochastic Environments,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 17: 371–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, R.C., and Burian, R.M. (1992), “A Defence of Propensty Interpretations of Fitness,” in Hull, D. and Forbes, M. (eds.), PSA 1992, vol. 1. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 349-62.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1956), “Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment”, reprinted in Simon, Models of Thought. New Haven: Yale University Press, chapter 1.2.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1981), The Sciences of the Artificial, Second Edition. Cambridee: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1983), Reason in Human Affairs Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Stearns, S.C. (1976), “Life-History Tactics: A Review of the Ideas,” The Quarterley Review of Biology 51: 3–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stearns, S.C. (1982), “On Fitness,” in Mossakowski, D. and Roth, G. (eds.), Environmental Adaptation and Evolution. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, pp. 3–17.Google Scholar
Stearns, S.C. (1992), The Evolution of Life Histories. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stephens, D.W., and Krebs, J.R. (1986), Foraging Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wallace, B. (1968), “Polymorphism, Population Size, and Genetic Load,” in Lewontin, R.C. (ed.), Populat6ion Biology and its Evolution pp. pp. 87–108.Google Scholar
Wallace, B. (1975), “Hard and Soft Selection Revisited,” Evolution 29: 465-74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar