Related papers: Purifying selection, drift and reversible mutation…

Stronger selection implies faster evolution---that is, the greater the force, the faster the change. This apparently self-evident proposition, however, is derived under the assumption that genetic variation within a population is primarily…

We consider an exponentially growing population of cells undergoing mutations and ask about the effect of reproductive fluctuations (genetic drift) on its long-term evolution. We combine first step analysis with the stochastic dynamics of a…

Languages and genes are both transmitted from generation to generation, with opportunity for differential reproduction and survivorship of forms. Here we apply a rigorous inference framework, drawn from population genetics, to distinguish…

Natural selection and random drift are competing phenomena for explaining the evolution of populations. Combining a highly fit mutant with a population structure that improves the odds that the mutant spreads through the whole population…

It has been shown that differences in fecundity variance can influence the probability of invasion of a genotype in a population, i.e. a genotype with lower variance in offspring number can be favored in finite populations even if it has a…

When mutation rates are low, natural selection remains effective, and increasing the mutation rate can give rise to an increase in adaptation rate. When mutation rates are high to begin with, however, increasing the mutation rate may have a…

Spatially resolved genetic data is increasingly used to reconstruct the migrational history of species. To assist such inference, we study, by means of simulations and analytical methods, the dynamics of neutral gene frequencies in a…

We consider neutral evolution of a large population subject to changes in its population size. For a population with a time-variable carrying capacity we have computed the distributions of the total branch lengths of its sample genealogies.…

Predicting the adaptation of populations to a changing environment is crucial to assess the impact of human activities on biodiversity. Many theoretical studies have tackled this issue by modeling the evolution of quantitative traits…

Intragenomic recombination (crossover) is a very important evolutionary mechanism. The crossover events are not evenly distributed along the natural chromosomes. Monte Carlo simulations revealed that frequency of recombinations decides…

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,…

Human populations have experienced dramatic growth since the Neolithic revolution. Recent studies that sequenced a very large number of individuals observed an extreme excess of rare variants, and provided clear evidence of recent rapid…

BACKGROUND: An important question is whether evolution favors properties such as mutational robustness or evolvability that do not directly benefit any individual, but can influence the course of future evolution. Functionally similar…

Recent microbial experiments suggest that enhanced genetic drift at the frontier of a two-dimensional range expansion can cause genetic sectoring patterns with fractal domain boundaries. Here, we propose and analyze a simple model of…

Motivated by present activities in (statistical) physics directed towards biological evolution, we review the interplay of three evolutionary forces: mutation, selection, and genetic drift. The review addresses itself to physicists and…

The human Y chromosome exhibits surprisingly low levels of genetic diversity. This could result from neutral processes if the effective population size of males is reduced relative to females due to a higher variance in the number of…

We consider the hypothesis that Evolution promotes population-wide genome patterns that, under randomization, ensures the External Validity of adaptations across population members. An adaptation is Externally Valid (EV) if its effect holds…

We consider a trait-structured population subject to mutation, birth and competition of logistic type, where the number of coexisting types may fluctuate. Applying a limit of rare mutations to this population while keeping the population…

Coevolving and competing species or game-theoretic strategies exhibit rich and complex dynamics for which a general theoretical framework based on finite populations is still lacking. Recently, an explicit mean-field description in the form…

In considering evolution of transcribed regions, regulatory modules, and other genomic loci of interest, we are often faced with a situation in which the number of allelic states greatly exceeds the population size. In this limit, the…