Surprising evolutionary predictions from enhanced ecological realism

A focus on the eco-evolutionary feedback continually operating between a population's evolution and its environment helps to appreciate the generality of ESS theory. Here we illustrate, through a sequence of four examples, how respecting such feedback in the evolutionary dynamics of quantitative traits may result in qualitatively unexpected outcomes. Reviewing existing insights and complementing these with new results, we show (1) that evolutionary matrix games are fundamentally degenerate and allow a natural unfolding, (2) that selection-driven extinction may not be rare in nature, (3) that evolutionary epidemiology should not rely on R_0 maximization, and (4) why the occurrence of Hardy-Weinberg proportions generically requires an evolutionary explanation.
KEYWORDS: Eco-evolutionary feedback; Matrix games; Unfolding evolutionarily singular points; Evolutionary suicide; Evolutionary epidemiology; Optimization principles; Deviations from Hardy-Weinberg; Sex-dependent fitness; Continuous stability

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