Related papers: Slow evolution of vertebrates with large genomes
Darwinian evolution can be modeled in general terms as a flow in the space of fitness (i.e. reproductive rate) distributions. In the diffusion approximation, Tsimring et al. have showed that this flow admits "fitness wave" solutions:…
Based on statistical analysis of the complete genome sequences, a remote relationship has been observed between the evolution of the genetic code and the three domain tree of life. The existence of such a remote relationship need to be…
If evolution can be connected to the principle of least action, and if it is depicted in evolution space versus time then it corresponds to the direction of ultimate causation. As an organism evolves and follows a path of proximate…
A mathematical model of interacting species filling ecological niches left by the extinction of others is introduced. Species organize themselves into genera of all sizes. The size of a genus on average grows linearly with its age,…
An elementary biostatistical theory based on a selectivity-variability principle is proposed to address a question raised by Charles Darwin, namely, how one sex of a sexually dimorphic species might tend to evolve with greater variability…
Developmental constraints have been postulated to limit the space of feasible phenotypes and thus shape animal evolution. These constraints have been suggested to be the strongest during either early or mid-embryogenesis, which corresponds…
Since steep declines in a population's size also typically alter its composition, population bottlenecks are considered highly important for evolution. However, despite such significance, the mechanisms governing the impact of a given…
By introducing the notions of living and dead nodes a new model of random tree evolution with continuous time parameter has been constructed. It is assumed that two random variables, the lifetime and the offspring number of living nodes…
Current-day genomes bear the mark of the evolutionary processes. One of the strongest indications is the sequence homology among families of proteins that perform similar biological functions in different species. The number of proteins in…
Population genetics struggles to model extinction; standard models track the relative rather than absolute fitness of genotypes, while the exceptions describe only the short-term transition from imminent doom to evolutionary rescue. But…
The purpose of this roadmap article is to draw attention to a paradigm shift in our understanding of evolution towards a perspective of ecological-evolutionary feedback, highlighted through two recent highly simplified examples of rapid…
We discovered a dynamic phase transition induced by sexual reproduction. The dynamics is a pure Darwinian rule with both fundamental ingredients to drive evolution: 1) random mutations and crossings which act in the sense of increasing the…
The rate of recombination affects the mode of molecular evolution. In high-recombining sequence, the targets of selection are individual genetic loci; under low recombination, selection collectively acts on large, genetically linked genomic…
Divergence time estimation requires the reconciliation of two major sources of data. These are fossil and/or biogeographic evidence that give estimates of the absolute age of nodes (ancestors) and molecular estimates that give us estimates…
One of the classical questions in evolutionary biology is how evolutionary processes are coupled at the gene and species level. With this motivation, we compare the topological properties (mainly the depth scaling, as a characterization of…
We introduce a new model for large scale evolution and extinction in which species are organized into food chains. The system evolves by two processes: origination/speciation and extinction. In the model, extinction of a given species can…
Evolution is the theory that plants and animals today have come from kinds that have existed in the past. Scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace dedicate their life to observe how species interact with their environment, grow,…
The prevalence of sexual reproduction ("sex") in eukaryotes is an enigma of evolutionary biology. Sex increases genetic variation only tells its long-term superiority in essence. The accumulation of harmful mutations causes an immediate and…
Weak purifying selection, acting on many linked mutations, may play a major role in shaping patterns of molecular evolution in natural populations. Yet efforts to infer these effects from DNA sequence data are limited by our incomplete…
We explore the connection between evolution and large-deviation theory. To do so, we study evolutionary dynamics in which individuals experience mutations, reproduction, and selection using variants of the Moran model. We show that, in the…