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Concept
Frequency-dependent selection
Summary
Frequency-dependent selection is an evolutionary process by which the fitness of a phenotype or genotype depends on the phenotype or genotype composition of a given population.
In positive frequency-dependent selection, the fitness of a phenotype or genotype increases as it becomes more common.
In negative frequency-dependent selection, the fitness of a phenotype or genotype decreases as it becomes more common. This is an example of balancing selection.
More generally, frequency-dependent selection includes when biological interactions make an individual's fitness depend on the frequencies of other phenotypes or genotypes in the population.
Frequency-dependent selection is usually the result of interactions between species (predation, parasitism, or competition), or between genotypes within species (usually competitive or symbiotic), and has been especially frequently discussed with relation to anti-predator adaptations. Frequency-dependent selection can lead to polymorphic equilibria, which result from interactions among genotypes within species, in the same way that multi-species equilibria require interactions between species in competition (e.g. where αij parameters in Lotka-Volterra competition equations are non-zero). Frequency-dependent selection can also lead to dynamical chaos when some individuals' fitnesses become very low at intermediate allele frequencies.
The first explicit statement of frequency-dependent selection appears to have been by Edward Bagnall Poulton in 1884, on the way that predators could maintain color polymorphisms in their prey.
Perhaps the best known early modern statement of the principle is Bryan Clarke's 1962 paper on apostatic selection (a synonym of negative frequency-dependent selection). Clarke discussed predator attacks on polymorphic British snails, citing Luuk Tinbergen's classic work on s as support that predators such as birds tended to specialize in common forms of palatable species.
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