Article ID: | iaor19962084 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 261 |
Start Page Number: | 279 |
End Page Number: | 284 |
Publication Date: | Oct 1995 |
Journal: | Proceedings of The Royal Society of London Series B |
Authors: | McNamara J.M., Webb J.N., Collins E.J. |
Keywords: | programming: dynamic |
The authors consider the problem of finding an optimal strategy for an organism in a large population when the environment fluctuates from year to year and cannot be predicted beforehand. In fluctuating environments, geometric mean fitness is the appropriate measure and individual optimization fails. Consequently, optimal strategies cannot be found by stochastic dynamic programming alone. The authors consider a simplified model in which each year is divided into two non-overlapping time intervals. In the first interval, environmental conditions are the same each year; in the second, they fluctuate from year to year. During the first interval, which ends at time of year