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Frequency-Dependent Selection Predicts Patterns of Radiations and Biodiversity

Figure 3

Radiations, number of species, and diversity (theory).

a, Simulated total number of species (both extant and extinct) as a function of time for the model with (black, also used for b and c) and without frequency-dependent selection (red). , and the minimum genetic similarity value, , also used for b and c. Time measured in generations. After a transient phase, speciation events occur at a nearly constant rate in the model without frequency-dependent selection. In contrast, the frequency-dependent selection scenario shows a rapid series of fission speciation events followed by a plateau with very low speciation and extinctions events. b, Simulated number of extant species as a function of time for the model with and without frequency-dependent selection. Insets represent the species abundance distribution at stationarity. x and y-axis represent the rank in species abundance from the most common to the most rare and the relative abundance of each species in the community, respectively. Frequency-dependent selection produces more extant species and higher diversity (inset in b). c, Simulated abundance symmetry of the new species after each speciation event. We measured the degree of symmetry in each speciation event as , where and are the size of the smallest new species and the mother species, respectively. Perfect symmetry means that the new species abundance is identical to the mother species abundance; low value means the new species abundance is much smaller than that of the mother species. Thick line represents perfect symmetry.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000892.g003