Related papers: Cooperation between genetic mutations and phenotyp…
The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simplifying assumption, because most organisms possess genetic traits…
The evolution and function of imitation have always been placed within the confines of animal learning and associated with its crucial role in cultural transmission and cultural evolution. Can imitation evolve as a form of phenotypic…
The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…
A mechanism of sympatric speciation is presented based on the interaction-induced developmental plasticity of phenotypes. First, phenotypes of individuals with identical genotypes split into a few groups, according to instability in the…
Plasticity-led evolution is a form of evolution where a change in the environment induces novel traits via phenotypic plasticity, after which the novel traits are genetically accommodated over generations under the novel environment. This…
Questions on possible relationship between phenotypic plasticity and evolvability, as well as that between robustness and evolution have been addressed over decades in the field of evolution-development. By introducing an evolutionary…
One of the leading theories for the origin of life includes the hypothesis according to which life would have evolved as cooperative networks of molecules. Explaining cooperation$-$and particularly, its emergence in favoring the evolution…
Understanding the mechanisms of species coexistence has always been a fundamental topic in ecology. Classical theory predicts that interspecific competition may select for traits that stabilize niche differences, although recent work shows…
Biological systems must be robust for stable function against perturbations, but robustness alone is not sufficient. The ability to switch between appropriate states (phenotypes) in response to different conditions is essential for…
A tumor can be thought of as an ecosystem, which critically means that we cannot just consider it as a collection of mutated cells but more as a complex system of many interacting cellular and microenvironmental elements. At its simplest, a…
Without contributing, defectors take more benefit from social resources than cooperators which is the reflection of a specific character of individuals. However, natural physical mechanisms of our society promote cooperation. Thus, in the…
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…
Fluctuating environments are situations where the spatio-temporal stochasticity plays a significant role in the evolutionary dynamics. The study of the evolution of cooperation in these environments typically assumes a homogeneous, well…
Developmental bias plays a major role in phenotypic evolution. Some researchers have argued that phenotypes, regulated by development, can only evolve along restricted trajectory under certain scenarios, such as the case for mammalian molar…
Phenotypic plasticity and its evolution may help evolutionary rescue in a novel and stressful environment, especially if environmental novelty reveals cryptic genetic variation that enables the evolution of increased plasticity. However,…
An increasing number of dissident voices claim that the standard neo-Darwinian view of genes as 'leaders' and phenotypes as 'followers' during the process of adaptive evolution should be turned on its head. This idea is older than the…
The theory of interaction-based evolution argues that, at the most basic level of analysis, there is a third alternative for how adaptive evolution works besides a) accidental mutation and natural selection and b) Lamarckism, namely, c)…
Evolutionary graph theory is a well established framework for modelling the evolution of social behaviours in structured populations. An emerging consensus in this field is that graphs that exhibit heterogeneity in the number of connections…
Repeated interaction between individuals is the main mechanism for maintaining cooperation in social dilemma situations. Variants of tit-for-tat (repeating the previous action of the opponent) and the win-stay lose-shift strategy are known…
Cooperation is fundamental to the functioning of biological and social systems in both human and animal populations, with the structure of interactions playing a crucial role. Previous studies have used networks to describe interactions and…