Related papers: The deleterious mutation load is insensitive to re…
We analyse a series of bacterial growth models with in-built inter-individual variation in rates of cell division. We show that this variation leads to reduced population growth in favorable regimes and reduced population killing in…
The accumulation of beneficial mutations on many competing genetic backgrounds in rapidly adapting populations has a striking impact on evolutionary dynamics. This effect, known as clonal interference, causes erratic fluctuations in the…
Frequency dependent selection and demographic fluctuations play important roles in evolutionary and ecological processes. Under frequency dependent selection, the average fitness of the population may increase or decrease based on…
Evolutionary branching is analysed in a stochastic, individual-based population model under mutation and selection. In such models, the common assumption is that individual reproduction and life career are characterised by values of a…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
The selection pressures that have shaped the evolution of complex traits in humans remain largely unknown, and in some contexts highly contentious, perhaps above all where they concern mean trait differences among groups. To date, the…
Large whole-genome sequencing projects have provided access to much of the rare variation in human populations, which is highly informative about population structure and recent demography. Here, we show how the age of rare variants can be…
Genome sizes have evolved to vary widely, from 250 bases in viroids to 670 billion bases in amoeba. This remarkable variation in genome size is the outcome of complex interactions between various evolutionary factors such as point mutation…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
Although mutations drive the evolutionary process, the rates at which the mutations occur are themselves subject to evolutionary forces. Our purpose here is to understand the role of selection and random genetic drift in the evolution of…
Genetic drift is stochastic fluctuations of alleles frequencies in a population due to sampling effects. We consider a model of drift in an equilibrium population, with high mutation rates: few functional mutations per generation. Such…
We are interested in modelling Darwinian evolution, resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. Our models are rooted in the microscopic, stochastic description of a population…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. The structure of a biological population affects which traits evolve. Understanding evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations is difficult. Precise results have been…
Genetic diversity is central to the process of evolution. Both natural selection and random genetic drift are influenced by the level of genetic diversity of a population; selection acts on diversity while drift samples from it. At a given…
Computer simulations of the Penna ageing model suggest that already a small fraction of births with enhanced number of new mutations can negatively influence the whole population.
Environmental changes greatly influence the evolution of populations. Here, we study the dynamics of a population of two strains, one growing slightly faster than the other, competing for resources in a time-varying binary environment…
For two genotypes that have the same mean number of offspring but differ in the variance in offspring number, natural selection will favor the genotype with lower variance. The concept of fitness becomes cloudy under these conditions…
We consider a model of a population of fixed size $N$ undergoing selection. Each individual acquires beneficial mutations at rate $\mu_N$, and each beneficial mutation increases the individual's fitness by $s_N$. Each individual dies at…
The role of the selection pressure and mutation amplitude on the behavior of a single-species population evolving on a two-dimensional lattice, in a periodically changing environment, is studied both analytically and numerically. The…
In order to analyze data from cancer genome sequencing projects, we need to be able to distinguish causative, or "driver," mutations from "passenger" mutations that have no selective effect. Toward this end, we prove results concerning the…