The interplay of trophic interactions and game dynamics gives rise to life-history trade-offs, consistent personalities, and predator–prey and aggression power laws

Abstract

Ecological processes and evolutionary change are increasingly recognized as intimately linked. Here, we introduce an eco-evolutionary model of trophic interactions between predators and prey and show that the flow of resources in the ecosystem results in the scale-invariant spatial and temporal structure of ecosystems. In contrast to conventional approaches that rely on fitness-based selection, evolution in our eco-evolutionary framework is a direct consequence of ecological interactions. To illustrate this, we combine trophic interactions with evolutionary games by allowing individuals to play a game within the population where they can adopt aggressive or non-aggressive strategies. We show that individuals develop consistent personalities and their life-history trade-offs become intertwined with the scale-invariant ecological dynamics. Aggressive individuals tend to live faster, more reproduction-focused lives, whereas nonaggressive individuals favor slower, longer-lived strategies. These patterns emerge naturally, rather than being imposed as model assumptions. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the nonequilibrium dynamics of resource flow play a decisive role in driving the evolution of consistent personalities within and across populations. We identify a new class of aggression scaling laws arising from the interplay of ecological and evolutionary processes. The model relates predator–prey scaling laws with food web control and shows that small offspring size, high relative prey mobility, low predator conversion efficiency, predator competition, and prey competition all favor prey control over the food web. Our findings illuminate how large-scale ecological patterns—including power laws in predator–prey biomass and avalanche-like resource pulses—can relate to evolutionary outcomes such as consistent personalities, life-history trade-offs, and density-dependent growth. This perspective strengthens the emerging view that ecology and evolution are two faces of the same coin, each shaping the other in a self-organized, energy-driven system.