Related papers: Neutral selection
The dynamics of a local community of competing species with weak immigration from a static regional pool is studied. Implementing the generalized competitive Lotka-Volterra model with demographic noise, a rich dynamics structure with four…
We study a stochastic community model able to interpolate from a neutral regime to a niche partitioned regime upon varying a single parameter tuning the intensity of niche stabilization, namely the difference between intraspecific and…
While Neutral Theory famously describes the number of discrete genetic differences in populations, we consider the number of genetic backgrounds under which such differences are observed - setting limits to the generalizability of their…
The concept of fitness as a measure for a species's success in natural selection is central to the theory of evolution. We here investigate how reproduction rates which are not constant but vary in response to environmental fluctuations,…
The simplest theories often have much merit and many limitations, and in this vein, the value of Neutral Theory (NT) has been the subject of much debate over the past 15 years. NT was proposed at the turn of the century by Stephen Hubbell…
Environment plays a fundamental role in the competition for resources, and hence in the evolution of populations. Here, we study a well-mixed, finite population consisting of two strains competing for the limited resources provided by an…
Classical ecological models predict that large, diverse communities should be unstable, presenting a central challenge to explaining the stable biodiversity seen in nature. We revisit this long-standing problem by extending the generalized…
The persistence of biodiversity of species is a challenging proposition in ecological communities in the face of Darwinian selection. The present article investigates beyond the pairwise competitive interactions and provides a novel…
We consider a particle system studied by E. Brunet and B. Derrida, which evolves according to a branching mechanism with selection of the fittest keeping the population size fixed and equal to $N$. The particles remain grouped and move like…
The maintenance of diversity, the `commonness of rarity', and compositional turnover are ubiquitous features of species-rich communities. Through a minimal model, we consider how these features reflect the interplay between environmental…
The abundance of different species in a community often follows the log series distribution. Other ecological patterns also have simple forms. Why does the complexity and variability of ecological systems reduce to such simplicity? Common…
Mutualistic interactions are widespread in nature, from plant communities and microbiomes to human organizations. Along with competition for resources, cooperative interactions shape biodiversity and contribute to the robustness of complex…
Patterns of biodiversity predicted by the neutral theory rely on a simple phenomenological model of speciation. To further investigate the effect of speciation on neutral biodiversity, we analyze a spatially-explicit neutral model based on…
Large sets of genotypes give rise to the same phenotype because phenotypic expression is highly redundant. Accordingly, a population can accept mutations without altering its phenotype, as long as thegenotype mutates into another one on the…
Neutral models for the dynamics of a system of competing species are used, nowadays, to describe a wide variety of empirical communities. These models are used in many situations, ranging from population genetics and ecological biodiversity…
One essential ingredient of evolutionary theory is the concept of fitness as a measure for a species' success in its living conditions. Here, we quantify the effect of environmental fluctuations onto fitness by analytical calculations on a…
We study the dynamics of a population subject to selective pressures, evolving either on RNA neutral networks or in toy fitness landscapes. We discuss the spread and the neutrality of the population in the steady state. Different limits…
We introduce and analyze a general model of a population evolving over a network of selectively neutral genotypes. We show that the population's limit distribution on the neutral network is solely determined by the network topology and…
Neutral theories have played a crucial and revolutionary role in fields such as population genetics and biogeography. These theories are critical by definition, in the sense that the overall growth rate of each single allele/species/type…
This is an introductory review of deterministic mutation-selection models for asexual populations (i.e., quasispecies theory) and related topics. First, the basic concepts of fitness, mutations, and sequence space are introduced. Different…