Evolution of dispersal kernels
From an individual's perspective, dispersal may be motivated by a number of reasons: avoiding competition for resources, avoiding inbreeding, or coping with the temporal variability of resource availability. The dynamics resulting from dispersal in conjunction with intra- and interspecific interactions often lead to spatially uneven patterns of species abundance. When the underlying landscape is assumed to be homogeneous in space and time, it is only these patterns that define the heterogeneous environmental conditions to which a species' potential for dispersal adapts. Dispersal is often modeled by kernels describing the probability distribution of distances over which individuals are dispersing. The aim of this study is to predict the outcome of evolution in the shape of such dispersal kernels, and to examine how these shapes depend on the competition regimes considered.