The stagnation paradox: the ever-improving but (more or less) stationary population fitness

Abstract

Fisher's fundamental theorem states that natural selection improves mean fitness. Fitness, in turn, is often equated with population growth. This leads to an absurd prediction that life evolves to ever-faster growth rates, yet no one seriously claims generally slower population growth rates in the Triassic compared with the present day. I review here, using non-technical language, how fitness can improve yet stay constant (stagnation paradox), and why an unambiguous measure of population fitness does not exist. Subfields use different terminology for aspects of the paradox, referring to stasis, cryptic evolution or the difficulty of choosing an appropriate fitness measure; known resolutions likewise use diverse terms from environmental feedback to density dependence and ‘evolutionary environmental deterioration’. The paradox vanishes when these concepts are understood, and adaptation can lead to declining reproductive output of a population when individuals can improve their fitness by exploiting conspecifics. This is particularly readily observable when males participate in a zero-sum game over paternity and population output depends more strongly on female than male fitness. Even so, the jury is still out regarding the effect of sexual conflict on population fitness. Finally, life-history theory and genetic studies of microevolutionary change could pay more attention to each other.