Related papers: Virulence as a Model for Interplanetary and Inters…
The study of the evolution of cooperative behaviours --which provide benefits to others-- and altruism --which provides benefits to others at a cost to oneself-- has been on the core of the evolutionary game theoretical framework since its…
Strong reciprocity is a fundamental human characteristic associated with our extraordinary sociality and cooperation. Laboratory experiments on social dilemma games and many field studies have quantified well-defined levels of cooperation…
The spatial dispersal of individuals is known to play an important role in the dynamics of populations, and is central to metapopulation theory. At the same time, local adaptation to environmental conditions creates a geographic mosaic of…
In a previous study, we considered an information-theoretic model of code evolution. In it, agents obtain information about their (common) environment by the perception of messages of other agents, which is determined by an interaction…
Reputation plays a crucial role in social interactions by affecting the fitness of individuals during an evolutionary process. Previous works have extensively studied the result of imitation dynamics without focusing on potential irrational…
The role of species interactions in controlling the interplay between the stability of an ecosystem and its biodiversity is still not well understood. The ability of ecological communities to recover after a small perturbation of the…
Multipartite viruses replicate through a puzzling evolutionary strategy. Their genome is segmented into two or more parts, and encapsidated in separate particles that appear to propagate independently. Completing the replication cycle,…
In this work, we explore constraints on the emergence and longevity of technologically intelligent civilizations in our Galaxy, considering the Fermi paradox. We argue that under optimistic assumptions about the probability of life and…
Understanding the concept of habitability is related to an evolutionary knowledge of the particular planet-in-question. Additional indications so-called "systemic aspects" of the planetary system as a whole governs a particular planet's…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
Empirical observations show that ecological communities can have a huge number of coexisting species, also with few or limited number of resources. These ecosystems are characterized by multiple type of interactions, in particular…
When there is conspicuous under-exploitation of a limited resource, it is worth asking what mechanisms allow presumably valuable resources to be left unused? Evolutionary biologists have generated a wide range of hypotheses to explain this,…
The mechanism behind the emergence of cooperation in both biological and social systems is currently not understood. In particular, human behavior in the Ultimatum game is almost always irrational, preferring mutualistic sharing strategies,…
We use a statistical model to investigate the detectability (defined by the requirement that they are in causal contact with us) of communicating civilizations within a volume of the universe surrounding our location. If the civilizations…
The Kepler mission has discovered a large number of planetary systems. We analyze the implications of the discovered single/multi-exoplanet systems from Kepler's data. As done in previous works, we test a simple model in which the intrinsic…
Coexistence of plants depends on their competition for common resources and indirect interactions mediated by shared exploiters or mutualists. These interactions are driven either by changes in animal abundance (density-mediated…
We study the effect of mutations in a simple model of colonization, based on Montecarlo simulations. When the population colonizes the whole available habitat, a maximum population density is reached, which depends on the mutation rate.…
The concept of a rapid spread of self-replicating interstellar probes (SRPs) throughout the Milky Way adds considerable strength to Fermi's Paradox. A single civilisation creating a single SRP is sufficient for a fleet of SRPs to grow and…
In this paper we study invasion probabilities and invasion times of cooperative parasites spreading in spatially structured host populations. The spatial structure of the host population is given by a random geometric graph on $[0,1]^n$,…
Antagonistic coevolution between hosts and parasites can have a major impact on host population structures, and hence on the evolution of social traits. Using stochastic modelling techniques in the context of bacteria-virus interactions, we…