Related papers: A Dual Role for Sex?
Identifying and quantifying the benefits of sex and recombination is a long standing problem in evolutionary theory. In particular, contradictory claims have been made about the existence of a benefit of recombination on high dimensional…
We discovered a dynamic phase transition induced by sexual reproduction. The dynamics is a pure Darwinian rule with both fundamental ingredients to drive evolution: 1) random mutations and crossings which act in the sense of increasing the…
We consider the dynamics imposed by natural selection on the populations of two competing, sexually reproducing, haploid species. In this setting, the fitness of any genome varies over time due to the changing population mix of the…
The question as to why most higher organisms reproduce sexually has remained open despite extensive research, and has been called "the queen of problems in evolutionary biology". Theories dating back to Weismann have suggested that the key…
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…
Various genome evolutionary models have been proposed these last decades to predict the evolution of a DNA sequence over time, essentially described using a mutation matrix. By essence, all of these models relate the evolution of DNA…
An asexual set of primitive bacteria is simulated with a bit-string Penna model with a Fermi function for survival. A recent hypothesis by Jan, Stauffer and Moseley on the evolution of sex from asexual cells as a strategy for trying to…
Evolving biomolecular networks have to combine the stability against perturbations with flexibility allowing their constituents to assume new roles in the cell. Gene duplication followed by functional divergence of associated proteins is a…
We present a two-species population model in a well-mixed environment where the dynamics involves, in addition to birth and death, changes due to environmental factors and inter-species interactions. The novel dynamical components are…
A question in evolutionary biology is why the number of males is approximately equal to that of females in many species, and Fisher's theory of equal investment answers that it is the evolutionarily stable state. The Fisherian mechanism can…
Many theories have been proposed to answer two questions on aging: "Why do we age?" and "How do we age?" Among them, evolutionary theories are proposed to interpret the evolutionary advantage of aging, and "saving resources for group…
The process of evolutionary emergence of purposeful adaptive behavior is investigated by means of computer simulations. The model proposed implies that there is an evolving population of simple agents, which have two natural needs: energy…
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…
Gynandromorphs are creatures where at least two different body sections are a different sex. Bilateral gynandromorphs are half male and half female. Here we develop a theory of gynandromorph ontogeny based on developmental control networks.…
There are two contrasting explanations of sleep: as a proximate, essential physiological function or as an adaptive state of inactivity and these hypotheses remain widely debated. To investigate the adaptive significance of sleep, we…
Maintaining genetic diversity as a means to avoid premature convergence is critical in Genetic Programming. Several approaches have been proposed to achieve this, with some focusing on the mating phase from coupling dissimilar solutions to…
This theory seeks to define species and to explore evolutionary forces and genetic elements in speciation and species maintenance. The theory explains how speciation and species maintenance are caused by natural selection acting on…
In large populations, multiple beneficial mutations may be simultaneously spreading. In asexual populations, these mutations must either arise on the same background or compete against each other. In sexual populations, recombination can…
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…
In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of…