Summary: © 2006 Nature Publishing Group
Local migration promotes competitive restraint in a
host­pathogen `tragedy of the commons'
Benjamin Kerr1
, Claudia Neuhauser2
, Brendan J. M. Bohannan3
& Antony M. Dean2
Fragmented populations possess an intriguing duplicity: even if
subpopulations are reliably extinction-prone, asynchrony in
local extinctions and recolonizations makes global persistence
possible1­8
. Migration is a double-edged sword in such cases: too
little migration prevents recolonization of extinct patches,
whereas too much synchronizes subpopulations, raising the like-
lihood of global extinction. Both edges of this proverbial sword
have been explored by manipulating the rate of migration within
experimental populations1,3­6,8
. However, few experiments have
examined how the evolutionary ecology of fragmented popu-
lations depends on the pattern of migration5

Source: Azevedo, Ricardo - Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston
Bergstrom, Carl T. - Department of Biology, University of Washington at Seattle
Kerr, Benjamin - Department of Biology, University of Washington at Seattle

Collections: Biology and Medicine; Environmental Sciences and Ecology