Evolutionary rescue of niche constructors from habitat exploitation

Organisms can improve their fitness by modifying their environments—a process known as (positive) niche construction. Since niche construction is inherently costly, requiring time and energy to perform, niche constructors are vulnerable to displacement by non-niche-constructing invaders that exploit the constructed habitats. One way constructors could avoid such displacement is by adapting to withstand the invaders and thus undergoing evolutionary rescue. Here we first analytically approximate the probability that a niche-constructing population—one building reproductive habitats—undergoes evolutionary rescue from habitat exploitation by an invading species. Then we evaluate the approximation under two different fitness costs of construction: a fecundity cost and a mortality cost. We find that fecundity costs are not only less harmful than mortality costs but can even promote rescue compared to no costs by reducing the rate at which constructors attempt reproduction and thus constructio..., , # Usage notes

This dataset contains four Mathematica notebooks created using Mathematica version 13.2.0.0. A summary of each notebook's contents is provided below.

**Figure_1.nb** contains the code and simulation data used to create Figure 1, which shows the stochastic and expected dynamics of our evolutionary rescue model.

**Figures_2–6.nb** contains the code and simulation data used to create Figures 2–6, which show how the probability of evolutionary rescue varies as a function of each of our model's constituent parameters.

**Simulation_Code_Figure_1.nb** includes the code used to generate the simulation data in Figure 1.

**Simulation_Code_Figures_2–6.nb** includes the code used to generate the simulation data in Figures 2–6.
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