Related papers: Population genetics of gene function
In mathematical population genetics, it is well known that one can represent the genealogy of a population by a tree, which indicates how the ancestral lines of individuals in the population coalesce as they are traced back in time. As the…
Reproductive success and survival are influenced by wealth in human populations. Wealth is transmitted to offsprings and strategies of transmission vary over time and among populations, the main variation being how equally wealth is…
The dynamics of two competing species in a finite size community is one of the most studied problems in population genetics and community ecology. Stochastic fluctuations lead, inevitably, to the extinction of one of the species, but the…
Life forms exhibit such a degree of exquisite organization that it seems impossible that they could have developed out of a process of trial and error, as intimated by the theory of Darwinian evolution. In this general public paper I…
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…
In classical evolutionary theory, genetic variation provides the source of heritable phenotypic variation on which natural selection acts. Against this classical view, several theories have emphasized that developmental variability and…
With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…
The paper discusses a connection between asymmetric reproduction -- that is reproduction in a parent-child relationship where the parent does not mutate during reproduction --, the fact that all non-viral lifeforms bear genes of their…
Repetitions within a given genealogical tree provides some information about the degree of consanguineity of a population. They can be analyzed with techniques usually employed in statistical physics when dealing with fixed point…
Essential to each other, growth and exploration are jointly observed in populations, be it alive such as animals and cells or inanimate such as goods and money. But their ability to move, crucial to cope with uncertainty and optimize…
Infinitely many distinct trait values may arise in populations bearing quantitative traits, and modeling their population dynamics is thus a formidable task. While classical models assume fixed or infinite population size, models in which…
The growth function of populations is central in biomathematics. The main dogma is the existence of density dependence mechanisms, which can be modelled with distinct functional forms that depend on the size of the population. One important…
Using an artificial system of self-replicating strings, we show a correlation between the age of a genotype and its abundance that reflects a punctuated rather than gradual picture of evolution, as suggested long ago by Willis. In support…
Several theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explain observed biodiversity patterns, ranging from the classical niche-based theories, mainly employing a continuous formalism, to neutral theories, based on statistical mechanics of…
Relation of genome sizes to organisms complexity is still described rather equivocally. Neither the number of genes (G-value), nor the total amount of DNA (C-value) correlates consistently with phenotype complexity. Using information theory…
Many questions that we have about the history and dynamics of organisms have a geographical component: How many are there, and where do they live? How do they move and interbreed across the landscape? How were they moving a thousand years…
We consider the cell population dynamics with $n$ different phenotypes. Both the Markovian branching process model (stochastic model) and the ordinary differential equation (ODE) system model (deterministic model) are presented, and…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
Is there an advantage to heterogeneity in a population where individuals grow and divide by fission? This is a broad question, to which there is no easy universal answer. This article aims to provide a quantitative answer in the specific…
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…