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Rozon, Eric

University of British Columbia

Evolutionary dynamics is a mathematical framework for rigorously studying intergenerational change resulting from competition between various types of individuals in a population. Patience describes how an agent’s perceived value of a delayed reward changes as the delay until receipt of the reward is varied. In this thesis, we seek to understand under what circumstances, and to what extent, patience is an adaptive evolutionary trait. To study the evolution of patience, we propose two models in which patience is parametrized and, consequently, fitness outcomes are computed. The first model is motivated by the process of squirrels foraging for nuts. After finding nuts, a squirrel may then either bank those nuts for later consumption or use them immediately to support offspring. How quickly a squirrel chooses to divert resources away from banking and toward producing offspring parametrizes patience. The second model is a continuous generalization of the first: we abstract away from concrete biological considerations and instead consider a generalized dilemma between some offspring early in life and more offspring later. We consider only those features which are common to any process of intergenerational trait development. For both models, we compute the level of patience favoured by natural selection and draw conclusions regarding why evolution may or may not favour patience.

Text

2021-12-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/80456

Mathematics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/