ReviewProceedings. Biological sciences2021
The stagnation paradox: the ever-improving but (more or less) stationary population fitness.
Review in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Evolution of thermal performance curves: A meta-analysis of selection experiments.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2023Pooled it
- A biological employment model of reproductive inequality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Fertility signalling games: should males obey the signal?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Adaptation to a limiting element involves mitigation of multiple elemental imbalances.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Different proxies, different stories? Imperfect correlations and different determinants of fitness in bighorn sheep.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
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Abstract
Fisher's fundamental theorem states that natural selection improves mean fitness. Fitness, in turn, is often equated with population growth. This leads to an absurd prediction that life evolves to ever-faster growth rates, yet no one seriously claims generally slower population growth rates in the Triassic compared with the present day. I review here, using non-technical language, how fitness can improve yet stay constant (stagnation paradox), and why an unambiguous measure of population fitness does not exist. Subfields use different terminology for aspects of the paradox, referring to stasis, cryptic evolution or the difficulty of choosing an appropriate fitness measure; known resolutions likewise use diverse terms from environmental feedback to density dependence and 'evolutionary environmental deterioration'. The paradox vanishes when these concepts are understood, and adaptation can lead to declining reproductive output of a population when individuals can improve their fitness by exploiting conspecifics. This is particularly readily observable when males participate in a zero-sum game over paternity and population output depends more strongly on female than male fitness. Even so, the jury is still out regarding the effect of sexual conflict on population fitness. Finally, life-history theory and genetic studies of microevolutionary change could pay more attention to each other.
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Registered trials
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