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We use the indirect evolutionary approach to study evolutionarily stable preferences against multiple mutations in single- and multi-population matching settings, respectively. Players choose strategies to maximize their subjective…
Mutational robustness quantifies the effect of random mutations on fitness. When mutational robustness is high, most mutations do not change fitness or have only a minor effect on it. From the point of view of fitness landscapes, robust…
Natural populations often show enhanced genetic drift consistent with a strong skew in their offspring number distribution. The skew arises because the variability of family sizes is either inherently strong or amplified by population…
A common view in evolutionary biology is that mutation rates are minimised. However, studies in combinatorial optimisation and search have shown a clear advantage of using variable mutation rates as a control parameter to optimise the…
Standard neutral population genetics theory with a strictly fixed population size has important limitations. An alternative model that allows independently fluctuating population sizes and reproduces the standard neutral evolution is…
Two major sources of stochasticity in the dynamics of neutral alleles result from resampling of finite populations (genetic drift) and the random genetic background of nearby selected alleles on which the neutral alleles are found (linked…
Heterozygote disadvantage is potentially a potent driver of population genetic divergence. Also referred to as underdominance, this phenomena describes a situation where a genetic heterozygote has a lower overall fitness than either…
In classical evolutionary theory, genetic variation provides the source of heritable phenotypic variation on which natural selection acts. Against this classical view, several theories have emphasized that developmental variability and…
We consider an asexual population under strong selection-weak mutation conditions evolving on rugged fitness landscapes with many local fitness peaks. Unlike the previous studies in which the initial fitness of the population is assumed to…
Due to stochastic fluctuations arising from finite population size, known as genetic drift, the ability of a population to explore a rugged fitness landscape depends on its size. In the weak mutation regime, while the mean steady-state…
Classical stochastic demography predicts that environmental stochasticity reduces population growth rates and, thereby, can increase extinction risk. In contrast, the SAS-CFF model demonstrates that environmental stochasticity can promote…
We study the evolution of mutation rates for an asexual population living on a static fitness landscape, consisting of multiple peaks forming an evolutionary staircase. The optimal mutation rate is found by maximizing the diffusion towards…
Coordination games admit two types of equilibria: pure equilibria, where all players successfully coordinate their actions, and mixed equilibria, where players frequently experience miscoordination. The existing literature shows that under…
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…
Dramatic rise of mutators has been found to accompany adaptation of bacteria in response to many kinds of stress. Two views on the evolutionary origin of this phenomenon emerged: the pleiotropic hypothesis positing that it is a byproduct of…
Weak purifying selection, acting on many linked mutations, may play a major role in shaping patterns of molecular evolution in natural populations. Yet efforts to infer these effects from DNA sequence data are limited by our incomplete…
In the absence of selection, the structure of allelic diversity is described by the elegant sampling formula of Ewens. This formula has helped shape our expectations of empirical patterns of molecular variation. Along with coalescent…
Evolutionary dynamics and patterns of molecular evolution are strongly influenced by selection on linked regions of the genome, but our quantitative understanding of these effects remains incomplete. Recent work has focused on predicting…
Positive selection distorts the structure of genealogies and hence alters patterns of genetic variation within a population. Most analyses of these distortions focus on the signatures of hitchhiking due to hard or soft selective sweeps at a…
Here we study how mutations which change physical properties of cell proteins (stability) impact population survival and growth. In our model the genotype is presented as a set of N numbers, folding free energies of cells N proteins.…