Related papers: Information -sharing, adaptive epigenetics and hum…
Evolution is the theory that plants and animals today have come from kinds that have existed in the past. Scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace dedicate their life to observe how species interact with their environment, grow,…
Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…
We propose a simple model for genetic adaptation to a changing environment, describing a fitness landscape characterized by two maxima. One is associated with "specialist" individuals that are adapted to the environment; this maximum moves…
Robustness, the insensitivity of some of a biological system's functionalities to a set of distinct conditions, is intimately linked to fitness. Recent studies suggest that it may also play a vital role in enabling the evolution of species.…
It is high time to openly and without finalism define the dangerous but needed term 'purposeful information', whose quantity is an Eigen information value. Using the term 'biological information' in its stead forces one into an…
can evolve simultaneously. For the information-driven adaptive process, susceptible (infected) individuals who have abilities to recognize the disease would break the links of their infected (susceptible) neighbors to prevent the epidemic…
Indirect reciprocity maintains cooperation in stranger societies by mapping individual behaviors onto reputation signals via social norms. Existing theoretical frameworks assume static environments with constant resources and fixed payoff…
Standard evolutionary theories of aging and mortality, implicitly based on assumptions of spatial averaging, hold that natural selection cannot favor shorter lifespan without direct compensating benefit to individual reproductive success.…
Microbial communities are ubiquitous in nature and come in a multitude of forms, ranging from communities dominated by a handful of species to communities containing a wide variety of metabolically distinct organisms. This huge range in…
The reward system is one of the fundamental drivers of animal behaviors and is critical for survival and reproduction. Despite its importance, the problem of how the reward system has evolved is underexplored. In this paper, we try to…
The rise in chronic diseases over the last century presents a significant health and economic burden globally. Here we apply evolutionary medicine and life history theory to better understand their development. We highlight an imbalanced…
Ecological systems are emergent features of ecological and adaptive dynamics of a community of interacting species. By natural selection through the abiotic environment and by co-adaptation within the community, species evolve, thereby…
World food supply is crucial to the well-being of every human on the planet in the basic sense that we need food to live. It also has a profound impact on the world economy, international trade and global political stability. Furthermore,…
Every interaction of a living organism with its environment involves the placement of a bet. Armed with partial knowledge about a stochastic world, the organism must decide its next step or near-term strategy, an act that implicitly or…
Competition between individuals drives the evolution of whole species. Although the fittest individuals survive the longest and produce the most offspring, in some circumstances the resulting species may not be optimally fit. Here, using…
A common assumption in evolutionary thought is that adaptation drives an increase in biological complexity. However, the rules governing evolution of complexity appear more nuanced. Evolution is deeply connected to learning, where…
Anthropogenic activity threatens biodiversity through climate change, habitat fragmentation, and increasing frequency and scale of disturbance. Various theoretical studies have sought to shed light on how these factors could promote or…
Environmental fluctuations can shape replicator dynamics, with important consequences for both prebiotic and modern ecosystems. However, it remains unclear how simple replicators can acquire and use information about fluctuating…
We present a new model of the evolutionary dynamics and the growth of on-line social networks. The model emulates people's strategies for acquiring information in social networks, emphasising the local subjective view of an individual and…
This review highlights brain health as a dynamic process shaped by both genetic and environmental influences throughout development. Critical periods provide unique windows of heightened neural plasticity, during which genetic-environmental…