Assisted percolation of slow-spreading mutants in heterogeneous environments
Populations and Evolution
2023-03-06 v1 Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
Environmental heterogeneity can drive genetic heterogeneity in expanding populations; mutant strains may emerge that trade overall growth rate for an improved ability to survive in patches that are hostile to the wild type. This evolutionary dynamic is of practical importance when seeking to prevent the emergence of damaging traits. We show that a sub-critical slow-spreading mutant can attain dominance even when the density of patches is below their percolation threshold and predict this transition using geometrical arguments. This work demonstrates a phenomenon of ''assisted percolation'', where one sub-critical process assists another to achieve super-criticality.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.01579,
title = {Assisted percolation of slow-spreading mutants in heterogeneous environments},
author = {Thomas Tunstall and Tim Rogers and Wolfram Möbius},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.01579},
year = {2023}
}