Related papers: Modeling microevolution in a changing environment:…
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…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
A quasispecies is a set of interrelated genotypes that have reached a situation of equilibrium while evolving according to the usual Darwinian principles of selection and mutation. Quasispecies studies invariably assume that it is possible…
A quasispecies is the stationary state of a set of interrelated genotypes that evolve according to the usual principles of selection and mutation. Quasispecies studies have invariably concentrated on the possibility of errors during…
Antigenic variation is the main immune escape mechanism for RNA viruses like influenza or SARS-CoV-2. While high mutation rates promote antigenic escape, they also induce large mutational loads and reduced fitness. It remains unclear how…
We present numerical results based on a simplified ecological system in evolution, showing features of extinction similar to that claimed for the biosystem on Earth. In the model each species consists of a population in interaction with the…
When mutations are rampant, quasispecies theory or Eigen's model predicts that the fittest type in a population may not dominate. Beyond a critical mutation rate, the population may even be delocalized completely from the peak of the…
The quasi-species equation describes the evolution of the probability that a random individual in a population carries a given genome. Here we map the quasi-species equation for individuals of a self-reproducing population to an ensemble of…
In this research, we present a generalized quasispecies model in which population growth is governed by an arbitrary nonlinear function incorporating time delays. We begin by demonstrating that, under the constant population constraint, the…
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…
The stacked contact process is a three-state spin system that describes the co-evolution of a population of hosts together with their symbionts. In a nutshell, the hosts evolve according to a contact process while the symbionts evolve…
We consider the evolution of populations under the joint action of mutation and differential reproduction, or selection. The population is modelled as a finite-type Markov branching process in continuous time, and the associated…
We present an SI epidemic model whereby a continuous variable captures variability in proliferative potential and resistance to infection among susceptibles. The occurrence of heritable, spontaneous changes in these phenotype and the…
In this work we consider an epidemic system modelling the evolution of a spore-producing pathogen within a multi-host population of plants. Here we focus our analysis on the study of the stationary states. We first discuss the existence of…
The theory of life history evolution provides a powerful framework to understand the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens in both epidemic and endemic situations. This framework, however, relies on the assumption that pathogen populations are…
Robustness, the insensitivity of some of a biological system's functionalities to a set of distinct conditions, is intimately linked to fitness. Recent studies suggest that it may also play a vital role in enabling the evolution of species.…
We investigate the evolutionary dynamics of a finite population of RNA sequences adapting to a neutral fitness landscape. Despite the lack of differential fitness between viable sequences, we observe typical properties of adaptive…
This paper demonstrates that simple yet important characteristics of coevolution can occur in evolutionary algorithms when only a few conditions are met. We find that interaction-based fitness measurements such as fitness (linear) ranking…
The environment has a strong influence on a population's evolutionary dynamics. Driven by both intrinsic and external factors, the environment is subject to continual change in nature. To capture an ever-changing environment, we consider a…
Predators often consume multiple prey and by mutually subsidizing a shared predator, the prey may reciprocally harm each other. When predation levels are high, this apparent competition can culminate in a prey species being displaced.…