Populations can persist in an environment consisting of sink habitats only

Populations that live in environments with different habitats have to distribute their offspring over these habitats. When population densities go to equilibrium, the evolutionary optimum is an ideal free distribution. Under an ideal free distribution, no offspring should be put into sink habitats. However, when the environmental conditions in a habitat are not constant but fluctuate, allocating offspring to sink habitats can increase the long term growth rate of a population. We demonstrate this principle in a simple model for offspring allocation. As a consequence, it is possible that populations persist in environments that only consist of sink habitats.