Decide on my question

[rosemckeon]

An examination of the spatial distribution of polyploids and diploids Given these assumptions:

• Pollen can disperse across the entire landscape.
• All plants can outcross or clone vegetatively.
• The number of clones is limited by the number of free adjacent spaces.
• Polyploids cannot outcross with diploids.
• 1 adult survives to reproduce on each landscape cell and the winner is completely random).

These assumptions mean that in almost all aspects diploids and polyploids are equal, however, polyploids are limited to clonal reproduction unless polyploidisation has occurred more than once on the landscape. Therefore, intraspecific competition is going to be higher for polyploids that will end up all clumped together and attempting to spread clonally.

Questions

1. What are the relative densities and abundances of each?
2. How high is the extinction rate of polyploids?
3. How high does the mutation rate (polyploidisation) have to be in order to achieve stable coexistence between diploids and polyploids? I expect it will need to be much higher than the rate in reality and this will infer how much their fitness benefits will need to compensate for in order for them to become established.
4. What happens when we unrealistically level the playing field and remove the intraspecific competition for polyploids by allowing clones to go anywhere? In this way, we can quantify how strong that competition is.

[rosemckeon]

Focusing now just on point 3.