Related papers: Quantifying the effects of anagenetic and cladogen…

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…

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…

One of the first beings affected by changes in the climate are trees, one of our most vital resources. In this study tree species interaction and the response to climate in different ecological environments is observed by applying a joint…

Real-world examples of periods of periodical organisms range from cicadas whose life-cycles are larger prime numbers, like 13 or 17, to bamboos whose periods are large multiples of small primes, like 40 or even 120. The periodicity is…

We study the limit of many small mutations of a model of population dynamics. The population is structured by phonological traits and is spatially inhomogeneous. The various sub-populations compete for the same nutrient which diffuses…

The number of extant individuals within a lineage, as exemplified by counts of species numbers across genera in a higher taxonomic category, is known to be a highly skewed distribution. Because the sublineages (such as genera in a clade)…

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…

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…

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…

Phylogenetic diversity is a measure for describing how much of an evolutionary tree is spanned by a subset of species. If one applies this to the (unknown) subset of current species that will still be present at some future time, then this…

Measures of biodiversity change such as the Living Planet Index describe proportional change in the abundance of a typical species, which can be thought of as change in the size of a community. Here, I discuss the orthogonal concept of…

We discuss a simple model of co-evolution. In order to emphasise the effect of interaction between individuals the entire population is subjected to the same physical environment. Species are emergent structures and extinction, origination…

Many theoretical models have been formulated to better understand the coevolutionary patterns that emerge from antagonistic interactions. These models usually assume that the attacks by the exploiters are random, so the effect of victim…

A major aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the respective roles of adaptive versus non-adaptive changes in the evolution of complexity. While selection is certainly responsible for the spread and maintenance of complex phenotypes,…

We study the evolutionary dynamics of a phenotypically structured population in a changing environment , where the environmental conditions vary with a linear trend but in an oscillatory manner. Such phenomena can be described by parabolic…

We derive a Poisson random field model for population site polymorphisms differences within and between two species that share a relatively recent common ancestor. The model can be either equilibrium or time inhomogeneous. We first consider…

In this work, we characterize the solution of a system of elliptic integro-differential equations describing a phenotypically structured population subject to mutation, selection and migration between two habitats. Assuming that the effects…

The process of speciation, where an ancestral species divides in two or more new species, involves several geographic, environmental and genetic components that interact in a complex way. Understanding all these elements at once is…

The coupling between evolutionary and ecological changes (eco-evolutionary dynamics) has been shown to be relevant among diverse species, and is also of interest outside of ecology, i.e. in cancer evolution. These dynamics play an important…

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…