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A systematic approach to finding variational approximation in an otherwise intractable non-conjugate model is to exploit the general principle of convex duality by minorizing the marginal likelihood that renders the problem tractable. While…
We calculate the probability distribution of repetitions of ancestors in a genealogical tree for simple neutral models of a closed population with sexual reproduction and non-overlapping generations. Each ancestor at generation g in the…
Many of the world's renewable resources are in decline. Optimal harvests with smooth recruitment is well studied but in recent years, ecologists have concluded that tipping points in recruitment are common. Recruitment with a tipping point…
We consider a spatial (line) model for invasion of a population by a single mutant with a stochastically selectively neutral fitness landscape, independent from the fitness landscape for non-mutants. This model is similar to those…
A phenomenon that strongly influences the demography of small introduced populations and thereby potentially their genetic diversity is the Allee effect, a reduction in population growth rates at small population sizes. We take a stochastic…
In biology and ecology, individuals or communities of individuals living in unpredictable environments often alternate between different evolutionary strategies to spread and reduce risks. Such behavior is commonly referred to as…
We propose a stochastic model for evolution. Births and deaths of species occur with constant probabilities. Each new species is associated with a fitness sampled from the uniform distribution on [0,1]. Every time there is a death event…
The theory of backward bifurcations provides a criterion for the existence of positive steady states in epidemiological models with parameters where the basic reproductive ratio is less than one. It is often seen in simulations that this…
In a tie-breaker design (TBD), subjects with high values of a running variable are given some (usually desirable) treatment, subjects with low values are not, and subjects in the middle are randomized. TBDs are intermediate between…
Wagner's modularity inducing problem domain is a key contribution to the study of the evolution of modularity, including both evolutionary theory and evolutionary computation. We study its behavior under classical genetic algorithms. Unlike…
We consider an asexual population under strong selection-weak mutation conditions evolving on rugged fitness landscapes with many local fitness peaks. Unlike the previous studies in which the initial fitness of the population is assumed to…
In evolutionary algorithms, the fitness of a population increases with time by mutating and recombining individuals and by a biased selection of more fit individuals. The right selection pressure is critical in ensuring sufficient…
Since the 1940s, population projections have in most cases been produced using the deterministic cohort component method. However, in 2015, for the first time, in a major advance, the United Nations issued official probabilistic population…
We study a model for the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) used by biological populations for choosing the time of life-history events, such as migration and breeding. In our model we accounted for both intra-species competition (early…
Probabilistic forecasting of multivariate time series is challenging due to non-stationarity, inter-variable dependencies, and distribution shifts. While recent diffusion and flow matching models have shown promise, they often ignore…
Population-based evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have been widely applied to solve various optimization problems. The question of how the performance of a population-based EA depends on the population size arises naturally. The performance of…
We consider a model of asexually reproducing individuals with random mutations and selection. The rate of mutations is proportional to the population size, $N$. The mutations may be either beneficial or deleterious. In a paper by Yu,…
Genetic drift is stochastic fluctuations of alleles frequencies in a population due to sampling effects. We consider a model of drift in an equilibrium population, with high mutation rates: few functional mutations per generation. Such…
Growing efforts to measure fitness landscapes in molecular and microbial systems are premised on a tight relationship between landscape topography and evolutionary trajectories. This relationship, however, is far from being straightforward:…
Dispersal is ubiquitous throughout the tree of life: factors selecting for dispersal include kin competition, inbreeding avoidance and spatiotemporal variation in resources or habitat suitability. These factors differ in whether they…