Related papers: Life history and mating systems select for male bi…
The possible coexistence of one host, one aggressive parasite and one non-lethal parasite is simulated using the Penna model of biological ageing. If the aggressive parasites survive the difficult initial times where they have to adjust…
Herbivorous wild species constantly strive to optimize the trade-off between energy and nutrient intake and predation risk during foraging. This has led to the selection of several evolutionary traits -- such as diet, habitat selection, and…
We study the qualitative properties of population cycles in a predator-prey system where genetic variability allows contemporary rapid evolution of the prey. Previous numerical studies have found that prey evolution in response to changing…
We explore the commonalities between methods for assuring the security of computer systems (cybersecurity) and the mechanisms that have evolved through natural selection to protect vertebrates against pathogens, and how insights derived…
The nature of epistasis has important consequences for the evolutionary significance of sex and recombination. Recent efforts to find negative epistasis as source of negative linkage disequilibrium and associated long-term sex advantage…
Suppose that females choose males based on attributes that do not signal any genetic quality that is not related to the choice itself. Can being choosy confer selective advantage in this situation? We introduce correlated strategies, which…
Microorganisms live in environments that inevitably fluctuate between mild and harsh conditions. As harsh conditions may cause extinctions, the rate at which fluctuations occur can shape microbial communities and their diversity, but we…
We introduce a general class of branching Markov processes for the modelling of a parasite infection in a cell population. Each cell contains a quantity of parasites which evolves as a diffusion with positive jumps. The growth rate,…
We discuss a simple model of co-evolution. In order to emphasise the effect of interaction between individuals the entire population is subjected to the same physical environment. Species are emergent structures and extinction, origination…
Predator prey interactions are one of ecology's central research themes, but with many interdisciplinary implications across the social and natural sciences. Here we consider an often-overlooked species in these interactions, namely…
Evolving systems, be it an antibody repertoire in the face of mutating pathogens or a microbial population exposed to varied antibiotics, constantly search for adaptive solutions in time-varying fitness landscapes. Generalists correspond to…
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…
In this paper, we extend a model of host-parasite co-evolution to incorporate the semi-conservative nature of DNA replication for both the host and the parasite. We find that the optimal mutation rate for the semi-conservative and…
General laws in ecological parasitology are scarce. Here we evaluate data published by over 100 authors to determine whether the number of hosts in a life cycle is associated with the degree of aggregation of fish parasites at different…
Current theories about mechanisms promoting species co-existence in diverse communities assume that species only interact ecologically. Species are treated as discrete evolutionary entities, even though abundant empirical evidence indicates…
The ratio of males to females in a population is a meaningful characteristic of sexual species. The reason for this biological property to be available to the observers of nature seems to be a question never asked. Introducing the notion of…
Species sharing a habitat will co-evolve to make use of the available resources, as consumption is modulated by competition and negative feedback loops between consumers and resources. The dietary range of a given species determines the…
Researchers puzzle over questions as to how rare species survive extinction, and why a significant proportion of microbial taxa are dormant. Computational simulation modeling by a genetic algorithm provides some answers. First, a…
Beneficial reversals of dominance reduce the costs of genetic trade-offs and can enable selection to maintain genetic variation for fitness. Beneficial dominance reversals are characterized by the beneficial allele for a given context (e.g.…
The goal of this article is to contribute towards the conceptual and quantitative understanding of the evolutionary benefits for (microbial) populations to maintain a seed bank (consisting of dormant individuals) when facing fluctuating…