Related papers: Fluctuating selection models and McDonald-Kreitman…

Evolutionary games on graphs describe how strategic interactions and population structure determine evolutionary success, quantified by the probability that a single mutant takes over a population. Graph structures, compared to the…

Cultural traits such as words, names, decorative styles, and technical standards often assume arbitrary values and are thought to evolve neutrally. But neutral evolution cannot explain why some traits come and go in cycles of popularity…

Fixation probabilities are essential for characterizing stochastic evolutionary dynamics, but analytical results remain limited mainly to systems with two competing types. We develop a perturbative framework to compute fixation…

Adaptation is a central topic in theoretical biology, of practical importance for analyzing drug resistance mutations. Several authors have used arguments based on extreme value theory in their work on adaptation. There are complications…

Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…

Natural selection acts on traits at different scales, often with opposing consequences. This article identifies the particular forces that act at each scale and how those forces combine to determine the overall evolutionary outcome. A…

When polygenic traits are under stabilizing selection, many different combinations of alleles allow close adaptation to the optimum. If alleles have equal effects, all combinations that result in the same deviation from the optimum are…

We study the population profile in a simple discrete time model of population dynamics. Our model, which is closely related to certain ``bit-string'' models of evolution, incorporates competition for resources via a population dependent…

Individuals of different types, may it be genetic, cultural, or else, with different levels of fitness often compete for reproduction and survival. A fitter type generally has higher chances of disseminating their copies to other…

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 characterization of plasticity, robustness, and evolvability, an important issue in biology, is studied in terms of phenotypic fluctuations. By numerically evolving gene regulatory networks, the proportionality between the phenotypic…

We show how highly-diverse ecological communities may display persistent abundance fluctuations, when interacting through resource competition and subjected to migration from a species pool. This turns out to be closely related to the ratio…

The adaptive evolution of a population under the influence of mutation and selection is strongly influenced by the structure of the underlying fitness landscape, which encodes the interactions between mutations at different genetic loci.…

The biological theory of adaptive dynamics proposes a description of the long-term evolution of a structured asexual population. It is based on the assumptions of large population, rare mutations and small mutation steps, that lead to a…

We study the response of a quantitative trait to exponential directional selection in a finite haploid population at the genetic and the phenotypic level. We assume an infinite sites model, in which the number of new mutations per…

Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…

Stochastic models of sequential mutation acquisition are widely used to quantify cancer and bacterial evolution. Across manifold scenarios, recurrent research questions are: how many cells are there with $n$ alterations, and how long will…

Positive density-dependence occurs when individuals experience increased survivorship, growth, or reproduction with increased population densities. Mechanisms leading to these positive relationships include mate limitation, saturating…

Bacteria evolve in volatile environments and complex spatial structures. Migration, fluctuations and environmental variability therefore have a significant impact on the evolution of microbial populations. Here, we consider a class of…

Mutation has traditionally been regarded as an important operator in evolutionary algorithms. In particular, there have been many experimental studies which showed the effectiveness of adapting mutation rates for various static optimization…