Related papers: Unifying Theories of Molecular, Community and Netw…
While Neutral Theory famously describes the number of discrete genetic differences in populations, we consider the number of genetic backgrounds under which such differences are observed - setting limits to the generalizability of their…
In classical evolutionary theory, genetic variation provides the source of heritable phenotypic variation on which natural selection acts. Against this classical view, several theories have emphasized that developmental variability and…
Simulations of the coevolution of many interacting species are performed using the Webworld model. The model has a realistic set of predator-prey equations that describe the population dynamics of the species for any structure of the food…
The networks of predator-prey interactions in ecological systems are remarkably complex, but nevertheless surprisingly stable in terms of long term persistence of the system as a whole. In order to understand the mechanism driving the…
How large ecosystems can create and maintain the remarkable biodiversity we see in nature is probably one of the biggest open questions in science, attracting attention from different fields, from Theoretical Ecology to Mathematics and…
Systems evolving according to the standard concept of biological or technological evolution are often described by catalytic evolution equations. We study the structure of these equations and find a deep relationship to classical…
The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simplifying assumption, because most organisms possess genetic traits…
A mechanism of sympatric speciation is presented based on the interaction-induced developmental plasticity of phenotypes. First, phenotypes of individuals with identical genotypes split into a few groups, according to instability in the…
We introduce a graph generating model aimed at representing the evolution of protein interaction networks. The model is based on the hypotesis of evolution by duplications and divergence of the genes which produce proteins. The obtained…
Complementarity among species with different traits is one of the basic processes affecting biodiversity, defined as the number of species in the ecosystem. We present here a soluble model ecosystem in which the species are characterized by…
We introduce the Webworld model, which links together the ecological modelling of food web structure with the evolutionary modelling of speciation and extinction events. The model describes dynamics of ecological communities on an…
Many decision-making algorithms draw inspiration from the inner workings of individual biological systems. However, it remains unclear whether collective behavior among biological species can also lead to solutions for computational tasks.…
Research shows that gene duplication followed by either repurposing or removal of duplicated genes is an important contributor to evolution of gene and protein interaction networks. We aim to identify which characteristics of a network can…
Ecological systems comprise an astonishing diversity of species that cooperate or compete with each other forming complex mutual dependencies. The minimum requirements to maintain a large species diversity on long time scales are in general…
Neutral theories have played a crucial and revolutionary role in fields such as population genetics and biogeography. These theories are critical by definition, in the sense that the overall growth rate of each single allele/species/type…
We study a version of the Tangled Nature model of evolutionary ecology redefined in a phenotype space where mutants have properties correlated to their parents. The model has individual-based dynamics whilst incorporating species scale…
We analyze evolutionary dynamics on graphs, where the nodes represent individuals of a population. The links of a node describe which other individuals can be displaced by the offspring of the individual on that node. Amplifiers of…
For many graph-related problems, it can be essential to have a set of structurally diverse graphs. For instance, such graphs can be used for testing graph algorithms or their neural approximations. However, to the best of our knowledge, the…
Empirical observations in marine ecosystems have suggested a balance of biological and advection time scales as a possible explanation of species coexistence. To characterise this scenario, we measure the time to fixation in neutrally…
Many complex systems can be described in terms of networks of interacting units. Recent studies have shown that a wide class of both natural and artificial nets display a surprisingly widespread feature: the presence of highly heterogeneous…