When
SPEAKER: Bill Matter, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona
DATE: Wednesday, March 11 2015
TIME: 3:00-4:00 pm
LOCATION: Marley Building, Room 230
ABSTRACT:
Most ecologists think of themselves as evolutionary ecologists, rightly so, given that the interactions of organisms with each other and the physical environment have been strongly influenced by natural selection. However, ecologists often use the term fitness in both an evolutionary context and an ecological context without acknowledging that the concepts, measures, and outcomes associated with the two ?types? of fitness are almost wholly different. Low levels of survival of all progeny produced in populations in nature lead me to the conclusion that nearly all individuals who do survive to maturity and leave young are fit, evolutionarily. Nearly all young produced by these parents also must be fit, but most will not survive and leave young of their own. These conclusions are incompatible with the practice of defining and quantifying fitness of individual animals (or plants) by recording their production of young. I will show how concepts about fitness are confused in ecological literature, and how data on survival in fish and small mammals can help clarify the two types of fitness. Changes in phenotype of the peppered moth in industrial England in the 1950?s provide an example for understanding fitness, a concept of great importance to ecologists and conservationists.