Related papers: Relations between organisms and the environment in…

We present some results of simulations of population growth and evolution, using the standard asexual Penna model, with individuals characterized by a string of bits representing a genome containing some possible mutations. After about…

Complex diseases are multifactorial traits caused by both genetic and environmental factors. They represent the most part of human diseases and include those with largest prevalence and mortality (cancer, heart disease, obesity, etc.).…

Single-cell experiments have revealed cell-to-cell variability in generation times and growth rates for genetically identical cells. Theoretical models relating the fluctuating generation times of single cells to the population growth rate…

The evolutionary balance between innate and learned behaviors is highly intricate, and different organisms have found different solutions to this problem. We hypothesize that the emergence and exact form of learning behaviors is naturally…

The concept of a carrying capacity is essential in most models to prevent unlimited growth. Despite the large amount of deaths it introduces, the actual influence of the Verhulst term in simulations is often times not accounted for.…

This chapter provides a pedagogical introduction and overview of spatial and temporal correlation and fluctuation effects resulting from the fundamentally stochastic kinetics underlying chemical reactions and the dynamics of populations or…

We use a simple model for biological ageing to study the mortality of the population, obtaining a good agreement with the Gompertz law. We also simulate the same model on a square lattice, considering different strategies of parental care.…

In large asexual populations, multiple beneficial mutations arise in the population, compete, interfere with each other, and accumulate on the same genome, before any of them fix. The resulting dynamics, although studied by many authors, is…

Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…

Ecology and evolution under changing environments are important in many subfields of biology with implications for medicine. Here, we explore an example: the consequences of fluctuating environments on the emergence of antibiotic…

A population of individuals with the same genes can present heterogeneous traits (phenotypes). The prevalence of this heterogeneity can be explained as a bet-hedging strategy that improves the population proliferation rate (fitness) in…

A natural phenomenon occurring in a living system is an outcome of the dynamics of the specific biological network underlying the phenomenon. The collective dynamics have both deterministic and stochastic components. The stochastic nature…

Both evolution and ecology have long been concerned with the impact of variable environmental conditions on observed levels of genetic diversity within and between species. We model the evolution of a quantitative trait under selection that…

In many social mammals, early life social adversity and social integration largely predict individual health, lifespan and reproductive success. Efforts in identifying the physiological mechanisms mediating the relationship between the…

Aging is considered as the property of the elements of a system to be less prone to change states as they get older. We incorporate aging into the noisy voter model, a stochastic model in which the agents modify their binary state by means…

Human life expectancy has dramatically improved over the course of the last century. Although this reflects a global improvement in sanitation and medical care, this also implies that more people suffer from diseases that typically manifest…

Lifespan distributions of populations of quite diverse species such as humans and yeast seem to surprisingly well follow the same empirical Gompertz-Makeham law, which basically predicts an exponential increase of mortality rate with age.…

The evolutionary biology of aging is fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of aging and how to develop anti-aging treatments. Thus far most evolutionary theory concerns the genetics of aging with limited physiological integration.…

Many physical and natural systems, including the population of species, evolve in habitats with spatial stochastic variations of the individuals' motility. We study here the effect of those fluctuations on invasion and genetic loss. A…

A large amount of population models use the concept of a carrying capacity. Simulated populations are bounded by invoking finite resources through a survival probability, commonly referred to as the Verhulst factor. The fact, however, that…