Chapter 12 - Individual Fitness

Publisher Summary

This affiliate considers individual fettle, defined by illustration to population fitness, in terms of individual-specific survival and reproductive parameters, determined at birth. In this context, the distinction betwixt realization and capacity is especially of import since individuals only live once. Individual fitness is a derived parameter, ane that is best evaluated in context of a hierarchical model, and naturally evaluated nether the Bayesian māramatanga. A population's fettle is its capacity to persist. Information technology is a summary of potentialities, rather than a summary of outcomes. In discussing fitness a mathematical model of population change is required. Fettle is a latent feature of the population and is defined every bit a function of model parameters. In genetic terms, fitness is the capacity of a genotype to be propagated into futurity generations. It is more natural to conceive of genotypic fettle in terms of individuals; genetically identical populations are the exception rather than the rule. It makes sense to think of individual-specific fecundity rates and survival rates, latent features associated entirely with an private's genetic make-up. Realized fitness is a random variable with distribution determined past latent parameters; latent fitness is a deterministic function of the latent parameters. The trouble with realized individual fitness is that it is an estimate based on a sample of size 1, the unmarried realization of an individual's life history. Fortunately, i does non need to operate in this way, but rather may consider individuals in a grouping context, seeing individual-specific parameters as stochastically related.

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