I am considering using a simulation model to evaluate the fitness of recent tree species with regard to global change. I want my simulated trees to evolve and I am almost sure somebody must have done this before, but I cannot find it in literature.
To clarify: I don't want to model changes in DNA, but in the resulting characteristics. Basically, the models I am looking for should include fitness and competition properties of individuals/species, a simulation of these organisms with dynamic interactions and as the fittest competitor can be identified, a new model run with evolved in-silico species.
There are some books about evolution of plant like as "Evolutionary Trends in Flowering Plants" (by A. Takhtajan) and " Plant Diversity and Evolution Genotypic and Phenotypic Variation in Higher Plant" (by R. J. Henry), "Ecology and evolution of Flowers" (by L.D. Harder and S.C.H. Barret). These books may be help you for your question.
In " Plant Diversity and Evolution Genotypic and Phenotypic Variation in Higher Plant", there are some informations about evolution of some Genera linking by molecular evidences. There are phylogenetic trees in this book but I think there isn't any model. "Ecology and Evolution of Flowers" include informations about sexual characters that heve been selected in ecological context. Thkhtajan tells evolutionary trends among plants.
There is an another book named "Evolutionary Ecology of Plant-Plant Interactions: An Empirical Modelling Approach". In this book, there are simulation models about plant growth and spatial effects.
I hope any one of these could be useful for your question. But as we know, the informations about plant evolution is yet less compared to animals.
Maybe you could try and contact directly the authors of these papers, I'm sure they have lots of information regarding the subject:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.22.1372
http://stubber.math-inf.uni-greifswald.de/~ebner/resources/uniWu/evoPlant2.pdf
Thank you for your answer, the books seem interesting. However, none of these books seem to cover simulation models, are they?
Hi Klemens, unfortunately I know of no simple answer to your question. the two bits of work that I know of the are closest to what you mention (and they aren't that close) are:
Feike Schiveing's work in one book and a number of papers. Highly mathematical optimality models, evolution could be considered by resetting the environmental conditions and rerunning:
Schieving, F. 1998. Plato’s plant : on the mathematical structure of simple plants and canopies. Leiden, The Netherlands : Backhuys.
SCHIEVING, F., & POORTER, H. (1999). Carbon gain in a multispecies canopy: the role of specific leaf area and photosynthetic nitrogen-use efficiency in the tragedy of the commons. New Phytol, 143, 201-211.
Sterck, F. J., & Schieving, F. (2007). 3-D growth patterns of trees: effects of carbon economy, meristem activity, and selection. Ecological Monographs, 77(3), 405-420.
OR:
Dan Falster's work on allocation over the life cycle:
Falster, D. S., Brännström, Å., Dieckmann, U., & Westoby, M. (2011). Influence of four major plant traits on average height, leaf‐area cover, net primary productivity, and biomass density in single‐species forests: a theoretical investigation. Journal of Ecology, 99(1), 148-164.
but, they are a long way from what I think you want to do. Good Luck!
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