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Cooperative behavior is widespread in nature, even though cooperating individuals always run the risk to be exploited by free-riders. Population structure effectively promotes cooperation given that a threshold in the level of cooperation…
Natural birth and death are fundamental mechanisms of population dynamics in ecosystems and have played pivotal roles in shaping population dynamics. Nevertheless, in studies of cyclic competition systems governed by the rock-paper-scissors…
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…
Predator-prey relationships are one of the most studied interactions in population ecology. However, little attention has been paid to the possibility of role exchange between species once determined as predators and preys, despite firm…
Sex is considered as an evolutionary paradox, since its evolutionary advantage does not necessarily overcome the two fold cost of sharing half of one's offspring's genome with another member of the population. Here we demonstrate that…
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…
Cyclic dominance between species may yield spiral waves that are known to provide a mechanism enabling persistent species coexistence. This observation holds true even in presence of spatial heterogeneity in the form of quenched disorder.…
Ecosystems can undergo sudden shifts to undesirable states, but recent studies with simple single species ecosystems have demonstrated that advance warning can be provided by the slowing down of population dynamics near a tipping point.…
In this work we study the process of mutant invasion on an example of a consumer-resource system with annual character of the behavior. Namely, individuals are active during seasons of fixed length separated by winter periods. All…
Many biological populations, such as bacterial colonies, have developed through evolution a protection mechanism, called bet-hedging, to increase their probability of survival under stressful environmental fluctutation. In this context, the…
The aim of this paper is to study two models for a bacterial population subject to antibiotic treatments. It is known that some bacteria are sensitive to antibiotics. These bacteria are in a state called persistence and each bacterium can…
We study evolutionary processes induced by spatio-temporal dynamics in prebiotic evolution. Using numerical simulations we demonstrate that hypercycles emerge from complex interaction structures in multispecies systems. In this work we also…
The evolution of antimicrobial resistance generally occurs in an environment where antimicrobial concentration is variable, which has dramatic consequences on the microorganisms' fitness landscape, and thus on the evolution of resistance.…
The puzzle associated with the cost of sex, an old problem of evolutionary biology, is discussed here from the point of view of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The results suggest, in a simplified model, that the prevalence of sexual…
Forty years ago, Robert May questioned a central belief in ecology by proving that sufficiently large or complex ecological networks have probability of persisting close to zero. To prove this point, he analyzed large networks in which…
Speciation is often associated with geographical barriers that limit gene flow. However, species can also emerge in continuous homogeneous environments through isolation by distance. When the environment is not homogeneous, natural…
Many theoretical models have been formulated to better understand the coevolutionary patterns that emerge from antagonistic interactions. These models usually assume that the attacks by the exploiters are random, so the effect of victim…
Many human males produce dysfunctional sperm. Various plants frequently abort pollen. Hybrid matings often produce sterile males. Widespread male sterility is puzzling. Natural selection prunes reproductive failure. Puzzling failure implies…
Vector-borne diseases often infect multiple host species, increasing the likelihood of disease persistence due to the presence of multiple reservoirs. Vector biting patterns and feeding preferences can shift in response to selective…
Antimicrobial protocols - using substances such as antibiotics or disinfectants - remain the preferred option for preventing the spread of pathogenic bacteria. However, bacteria can develop mechanisms to reduce their antimicrobial…