An ESS for the height of a plant population, or an optimal height for an individual? Rethinking game-theoretic models for plant height

Plants only interact with neighbors over restricted distances, so local conditions are of great significance for plants. It is therefore important to consider spatial structure and neighborhood effects if we are to understand plants' strategies. We constructed a spatially-explicit, game theory model to explore optimal height growth at the individual-level. In the model, there is no ESS for height growth at the population level, because there is an instantaneous optimal height growth strategy for the individual plant that changes depending on the local light environment. The optimal strategy is plasticity in response to local conditions. Game-theoretic models for plant phenotypic traits should move from mean-field approximations towards explicit modeling of local interactions.