Fig. 1: Aethionema arabicum sub-habitats and
dimorphic dispersal strategy (not to scale). Aethionema arabicum is a
dimorphic plant species that grows along steep stony slopes in the
Anatolian Mountains and produces a ratio of dispersing and
non-dispersing offspring, dependent on the ambient temperature of the
native sub-habitat (Lenser et al. , 2016).
Distributing offspring across sub-habitats can increase fitness and
allows population survival in environments where they could not without
dispersal (Jansen and Yoshimura, 1998). If an organism can sense which
sub-habitat it resides in, is it adaptive to have dispersal strategies
that are contingent on the sub-habitat? Here we show theoretically how
individuals altering their dispersal ratio in response to localised
environmental variability could be aided through sensing. We develop a
theoretical approach for sub-habitats that differ in their environmental
variability. We show that site-specific dispersal ratios, aided by
sensing, are adaptive in response to differences between sub-habitats,
and therefore there is selection for traits that possess this ability.