Related papers: Does Sex Induce a Phase Transition?
Evolutionary analyses of large populations commonly incorporate stochasticity through temporal variation in selection while treating genetic transmission as fixed. Much less attention has been given to stochasticity in transmission itself.…
We consider a recent innovative theory by Chastain et al. on the role of sex in evolution [PNAS'14]. In short, the theory suggests that the evolutionary process of gene recombination implements the celebrated multiplicative weights updates…
We study the evolution of artificial learning systems by means of selection. Genetic programming is used to generate a sequence of populations of algorithms which can be used by neural networks for supervised learning of a rule that…
The purpose of this roadmap article is to draw attention to a paradigm shift in our understanding of evolution towards a perspective of ecological-evolutionary feedback, highlighted through two recent highly simplified examples of rapid…
Biological evolution is realised through the same mechanisms of birth and death that underlie change in population density. The deep interdependence between ecology and evolution is well-established, and recent models focus on integrating…
We have developed a mathematical model that captures stress-induced mutagenesis, a fundamental aspect of pathogenic and neoplastic evolutionary dynamics, on the fitness landscape with multiple relevant genetic traits as a high-dimensional…
We study the interplay of population growth and evolutionary dynamics using a stochastic model based on birth and death events. In contrast to the common assumption of an independent population size, evolution can be strongly affected by…
The environment in which a population evolves can have a crucial impact on selection. We study evolutionary dynamics in finite populations of fixed size in a changing environment. The population dynamics are driven by birth and death…
Using a bit-string model of evolution, we find a successful route to diploidy and sex in simple organisms. Allowing the sexually reproducing diploid individuals to also perform mitosis, as they do in a haploid-diploid cycle, leads to the…
The vast majority of mutations are deleterious, and are eliminated by purifying selection. Yet in finite asexual populations, purifying selection cannot completely prevent the accumulation of deleterious mutations due to Muller's ratchet:…
Because mutations are mostly deleterious, mutation rates should be reduced by natural selection. However, mutations also provide the raw material for adaptation. Therefore, evolutionary theory suggests that the mutation rate must balance…
An elementary biostatistical theory based on a selectivity-variability principle is proposed to address a question raised by Charles Darwin, namely, how one sex of a sexually dimorphic species might tend to evolve with greater variability…
Evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena. Yet it is widely treated as a subset of population genetics, and thus its scope is artificially limited. As a result, the key issues of how rapidly…
In a wide variety of natural systems, closely-related microbial strains coexist stably, resulting in high levels of fine-scale biodiversity. However, the mechanisms that stabilize this coexistence are not fully understood. Spatial…
The traditional dynamical phase transition refers to the appearance of singularities in an observable with respect to a control parameter for a late-time state or singularities in the rate function of the Loschmidt echo with respect to…
Computer experiments that mirror the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual organisms as they occur in nature, tested features proposed to explain the evolution of sexual recombination. Results show that this evolution is better…
The continuity of life and its evolution, we proposed, emerge from an interactive group process manifested in networks of interaction. We term this process \textit{survival-of-the-fitted}. Here, we reason that survival of the fitted results…
In an adaptive population which models financial markets and distributed control, we consider how the dynamics depends on the diversity of the agents' initial preferences of strategies. When the diversity decreases, more agents tend to…
The importance of mutator clones in the adaptive evolution of asexual populations is not fully understood. Here we address this problem by using an ab initio microscopic model of living cells, whose fitness is derived directly from their…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…