Related papers: Statistical Physics of Adaptation
The theory of life history evolution provides a powerful framework to understand the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens in both epidemic and endemic situations. This framework, however, relies on the assumption that pathogen populations are…
Motivated by the wide range of known self-replicating systems, some far from genetics, we study a system composed by individuals having an internal dynamics with many possible states that are partially stable, with varying mutation rates.…
While Neutral Theory famously describes the number of discrete genetic differences in populations, we consider the number of genetic backgrounds under which such differences are observed - setting limits to the generalizability of their…
Molecular phenotypes link genomic information with organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Quantitative traits are complex phenotypes that depend on multiple genomic loci. In this paper, we study the adaptive evolution of a…
Populations of replicating entities frequently experience sudden or cyclical changes in environment. We explore the implications of this phenomenon via a environmental switching parameter in several common evolutionary dynamics models…
A fundamental problem in the fields of population genetics, evolution, and community ecology, is the fate of a single mutant, or invader, introduced in a finite population of wild types. For a fixed-size community of $N$ individuals, with…
In large asexual populations, multiple beneficial mutations arise in the population, compete, interfere with each other, and accumulate on the same genome, before any of them fix. The resulting dynamics, although studied by many authors, is…
Evolution is the process of optimal adaptation of biological populations to their living environments. This is expressed via the concept of fitness, defined as relative reproductive success. However, it has been pointed out that this…
A numerical experiment of ideal stochastic motion of a particle subject to conservative forces and Gaussian noise reveals that the path probability depends exponentially on action. This distribution implies a fundamental principle…
We propose a hybrid dynamical system approach to model the evolution of a pathogen that experiences different selective pressures according to a stochastic process. In every environment, the evolution of the pathogen is described by a…
We propose a mathematical framework for natural selection in finite populations. Traditionally, many of the selection-based processes used to describe cultural and genetic evolution (such as imitation and birth-death models) have been…
Dispersal is an important strategy that allows organisms to locate and exploit favorable habitats. The question arises: given competition in a spatially heterogeneous landscape, what is the optimal rate of dispersal? Continuous population…
We study the stochastic evolution of four species in cyclic competition in a well mixed environment. In systems composed of a finite number $N$ of particles these simple interaction rules result in a rich variety of extinction scenarios,…
Behavioral changes in animals and humans, as a consequence of an error or a verbal instruction, can be extremely rapid. Improvement in behavioral performances are usually associated in machine learning and reinforcement learning to synaptic…
Mathematical theory of selection is developed within the frameworks of general models of inhomogeneous populations with continuous time. Methods that allow us to study the distribution dynamics under natural selection and to construct…
Positive density-dependence occurs when individuals experience increased survivorship, growth, or reproduction with increased population densities. Mechanisms leading to these positive relationships include mate limitation, saturating…
The goal of this paper is to understand if the property of adaptation, which is a typical property of many biochemical systems, can be achieved only by biological systems that actively consume energy or if it can be achieved also by passive…
The selection pressures that have shaped the evolution of complex traits in humans remain largely unknown, and in some contexts highly contentious, perhaps above all where they concern mean trait differences among groups. To date, the…
Extinction appears ubiquitously in many fields, including chemical reactions, population biology, evolution, and epidemiology. Even though extinction as a random process is a rare event, its occurrence is observed in large finite…
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)…