Modeling Adaptive Bet-Hedging: A Reappraisal.

Recent evolutionary bet-hedging models under fluctuating environments and environmental cues have adhered more or less to the classic growth-optimal strategy framework. In this talk, we outline a proposal for extensive departures from the standard framework to better account for evolutionary trajectories and fitness maximization under stochastic growth. Crucially, we incorporate considerations of volatility, motivated by accounting for interim extinction risk in finite populations, in conjunction with a shifting perspective from hypothetically infinite to finite-time evolutionary horizons.