Related papers: Developmental constraints on vertebrate genome evo…
The parallel mutation-selection evolutionary dynamics, in which mutation and replication are independent events, is solved exactly in the case that the Malthusian fitnesses associated to the genomes are described by the Random Energy Model…
Is evolution always gradual or can it make leaps? We examine a mathematical model of an evolutionary process on a fitness landscape and obtain analytic solutions for the probability of multi-mutation leaps, that is, several mutations…
The contribution to an organism's phenotype from one genetic locus may depend upon the status of other loci. Such epistatic interactions among loci are now recognized as fundamental to shaping the process of adaptation in evolving…
The performance of evolutionary algorithms can be heavily undermined when constraints limit the feasible areas of the search space. For instance, while Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy is one of the most efficient algorithms…
Much of the genome is expressed in the vertebrate brain, with individual genes exhibiting different spatially-varying patterns of expression. These variations are not independent, with pairs of genes exhibiting complex patterns of…
The existence of complex (multiple-step) genetic adaptations that are "irreducible" (i.e., all partial combinations are less fit than the original genotype) is one of the longest standing problems in evolutionary biology. In standard…
The persistence of life requires populations to adapt at a rate commensurate with the dynamics of their environment. Successful populations that inhabit highly variable environments have evolved mechanisms to increase the likelihood of…
A phylogenetic tree shows the evolutionary relationships among species. Internal nodes of the tree represent speciation events and leaf nodes correspond to species. A goal of phylogenetics is to combine such trees into larger trees, called…
Competition between biological species in marine environments is affected by the motion of the surrounding fluid. An effective 2D compressibility can arise, for example, from the convergence and divergence of water masses at the depth at…
Osteolytic metastases located in the vertebrae reduce strength and enhance the risk of vertebral fractures. This risk can be predicted by means of validated finite element models, but their reproducibility needs to be assessed. For that…
Motivated by present activities in (statistical) physics directed towards biological evolution, we review the interplay of three evolutionary forces: mutation, selection, and genetic drift. The review addresses itself to physicists and…
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…
Hundreds of Evolutionary Computation approaches have been reported. From an evolutionary perspective they focus on two fundamental mechanisms: cultural inheritance in Swarm Intelligence and genetic inheritance in Evolutionary Algorithms.…
Predicting evolution of expanding populations is critical to control biological threats such as invasive species and cancer metastasis. Expansion is primarily driven by reproduction and dispersal, but nature abounds with examples of…
Commonly recognized evolutionarily relevant effects of sexual reproduction include increased diversity, accelerated adaptation, and constrained accumulation of deleterious mutations, along with a secondary effect of species genotype…
We study the evolution of recombination using a microscopic model developed within the frame of the theory of quantitative traits. Two components of fitness are considered: a static one that describes adaptation to environmental factors not…
Self-propelling organisms locomote via generation of patterns of self-deformation. Despite the diversity of body plans, internal actuation schemes and environments in limbless vertebrates and invertebrates, such organisms often use similar…
Natural selection has produced an extraordinary diversity of life histories spanning many orders of magnitude in body size, vital rates, and biological times. In general, big and cold organisms grow and reproduce slowly and live long lives;…
During embryonic development, differentiating cells respond via gene expression to positional cues from morphogen gradients. While gene expression is often highly erratic, embryonic development is precise. We show by theory and simulations…
In evolutionary robotics, robot morphologies are designed automatically using evolutionary algorithms. This creates a body-brain optimization problem, where both morphology and control must be optimized together. A common approach is to…