Evolutionary invasion analysis of behavioral plasticity
If resource (forage) availability can indeed have a significant effect on the movement behavior, then the question is whether the movement strategy corresponds with an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS). We therefore generated a pairwise invasibility plot (PIP, Fig. 6), by performing an evolutionary invasibility analysis (see Materials and Methods ) to determine whether the optimal value is a long-term outcome of competition selection, or just be exploited by free-riding strategies (38). The PIP reveals that diatom movement strategy of diatoms observed in our experiments is not only an evolutionarily stable strategy but also convergence stable. Here, we did not observe a branching to occur when the parameters of the model are changed in the evolutionary dynamics. In addition, integrating the effect of multiple attractors into evolutionary strategies remain a fascinating topic for future research. Our model provides a universal way to understand the ecologically relevant functions of movement behavior from the perspective of foraging theory.