How bad is to be slow-reacting ? On the effect of the delay in response   to a changing environment on a population's survival
  We consider a simple-model population, whose individuals react with a certain delay to temporal variations of their habitat. We investigate the impact of such a delayed-answer on the survival chances of the population, both in a periodically changing environment, and in the case of an abrupt change of it. It is found that for population with low degree of mutation-induced variability, being "slow-reacting" decreases the extinction risk face to environmental changes. On the contrary, for populations with high mutation amplitude, the delayed reaction reduces the survival chances. 
Ioana Bena, Michel Droz, Janusz Szwabinski, Andrzej Pekalski