Related papers: Change and Aging Senescence as an adaptation
Here, we address the essential question of whether, in the context of evolving populations, ecosystems attain properties that enable persistence of the ecosystem itself. We use a simple ecosystem model describing resource, producer, and…
Global change is reshaping ecosystems and societies. Strategic choices that were best yesterday may be sub-optimal tomorrow; and environmental conditions that were once taken for granted may soon cease to exist. In this setting, how people…
Sexual selection theory models evolution of sexual signals and preferences using simple life histories. However, life-history models predict that males benefit from increasing sexual investment approaching old age, producing age-dependent…
We show that evolution in a population of adaptive agents, repeatedly competing for a limited resource, can come to an abrupt halt. This transition from evolutionary to non-evolutionary behavior arises as the global resource level is…
We present a model for biological aging that considers the number of individuals whose (inherited) genetic charge determines the maximum age for death: each individual may die before that age due to some external factor, but never after…
We are living in an uncertain and dynamically changing world, where optimal decision-making under uncertainty is directly linked to the survival of species. However, evolutionary selection pressures that shape value-based decision-making…
Natural selection imply that any organisms including human being will evolve to improve its fitness advantage and the selected genotype or phenotype in equilibrium state will not vary over the time. However, evolutionary process of…
The theory of natural selection has two forms. Deductive theory describes how populations change over time. One starts with an initial population and some rules for change. From those assumptions, one calculates the future state of 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…
Evolution gave rise to human and animal intelligence here on Earth. We argue that the path to developing artificial human-like-intelligence will pass through mimicking the evolutionary process in a nature-like simulation. In Nature, there…
The adaptation rate in theoretical models of biological evolution increases with the mutation rate but only to a point when mutations into lethal states cause extinction. One would expect that removing such states should be beneficial for…
The network concept is increasingly used for the description of complex systems. Here we summarize key aspects of the evolvability and robustness of the hierarchical network-set of macromolecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems. Listing…
The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…
Computer modelling for evolutionary systems consists in: 1) to store in the memory the individual features of each member of a large population; and 2) to update the whole system repeatedly, as time goes by, according to some prescribed…
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…
We construct a model of speciation from evolution in an ecosystem consisting of a limited amount of energy recources. The species posses genetic information, which is inherited according to the rules of the Penna model of genetic evolution.…
We investigate a simple quantitative genetics model subjet to a gradual environmental change from the viewpoint of the phylogenies of the living individuals. We aim to understand better how the past traits of their ancestors are shaped by…
It is now increasingly realized that the underlying mechanism which governs aging (ageing) is a complex interplay of genetic regulation and damage-accumulation. "Aging as a result of accumulation of 'faults' on cellular and molecular…
System dynamics and agent based simulation models can both be used to model and understand interactions of entities within a population. Our modeling work presented here is concerned with understanding the suitability of the different types…
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.…