2024/10/01 by Edward Lee, Jessica C. Flack, David C. Krakauer · 2 voices
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Physiological and biochemical adaptations
paper · pdf · doi:10.1098/rspb.2024.1606
openalex publication_date 2024/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Organisms can learn in response to environmental inputs as well as actively modify their environments through niche construction on slower evolutionary time scales. How quickly should an organism respond to a changing environment, and when possible, should organisms adjust the time scale of environmental change? We formulate these questions using a model of learning costs that considers optimal time scales of both memory and environment. We derive a general, sublinear scaling law for optimal memory as a function of environmental persistence. This encapsulates a trade-off between remembering and forgetting. We place learning strategies within a niche construction dynamics in a game theoretic setting. Niche construction is found to reduce or stabilize environmental volatility when learned environmental resources can be monopolized. When learned resources are shared, niche destructors evolve to degrade the shared environment. We integrate these results into a metabolic scaling framework in order to derive learning strategies as a function of body size.