Related papers: Avoiding extinction by migration: The case of the …
Rapidly mutating pathogens may be able to persist in the population and reach an endemic equilibrium by escaping hosts' acquired immunity. For such diseases, multiple biological, environmental and population-level mechanisms determine the…
Host-parasitoid population dynamics is often probed using a semi-discrete/hybrid modeling framework. Here, the update functions in the discrete-time model connecting year-to-year changes in the population densities are obtained by solving…
Geographic isolation is a central mechanism of speciation, but perfect isolation of populations is rare. Although speciation can be hindered if gene flow is large, intermediate levels of migration can enhance speciation by introducing…
Researchers puzzle over questions as to how rare species survive extinction, and why a significant proportion of microbial taxa are dormant. Computational simulation modeling by a genetic algorithm provides some answers. First, a…
Bacteria evolve in volatile environments and complex spatial structures. Migration, fluctuations and environmental variability therefore have a significant impact on the evolution of microbial populations. Here, we consider a class of…
Dispersal of species to find a more favorable habitat is important in population dynamics. Dispersal rates evolve in response to the relative success of different dispersal strategies. In a simplified deterministic treatment (J. Dockery, V.…
Population dynamics is constrained by the environment, which needs to obey certain conditions to support population growth. We consider a standard model for the evolution of a single species population density, that includes reproduction,…
We investigate the evolutionary rescue of a microbial population in a gradually deteriorating environment, through a combination of analytical calculations and stochastic simulations. We consider a population destined for extinction in the…
The question of whether a population will persist or go extinct is of key interest throughout ecology and biology. Various mathematical techniques allow us to generate knowledge regarding individual behaviour, which can be analysed to…
In recent years the spread of the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor has become the most serious threat to worldwide apiculture. In the model presented here we extend the bee population dynamics with mite viral epidemiology examined in an…
We introduce a generalized version of the frog model to describe the invasion of a parasite population in a spatially structured immobile host population with host immunity on the integer line. Parasites move according to simple symmetric…
As a result of climate change, many populations have to modify their range to follow the suitable areas - their "climate envelope" - often risking extinction. During this migration process, they may face absolute boundaries to dispersal,…
Many types of bacteria can survive under stress by switching stochastically between two different phenotypes: the "normals" who multiply fast, but are vulnerable to stress, and the "persisters" who hardly multiply, but are resilient to…
A colony of the queenless ant species, \emph{Pristomyrmex punctatus}, can broadly be seen as consisting of small-body sized worker ants and relatively larger body-sized cheater ants. Hence, in the presence of inter-colony migration, a set…
Ecological systems comprise an astonishing diversity of species that cooperate or compete with each other forming complex mutual dependencies. The minimum requirements to maintain a large species diversity on long time scales are in general…
We investigate invasions from a biological reservoir to an initially empty, heterogeneous habitat in the presence of advection. The habitat consists of a periodic alternation of favorable and unfavorable patches. In the latter the…
Interactions in ecological communities are inherently nonlinear and can lead to complex population dynamics including irregular fluctuations induced by chaos. Chaotic population dynamics can exhibit violent oscillations with extremely small…
A classical view of speciation is that reproductive isolation arises as a by-product of genetic divergence. Here, individual-based simulations are used to evaluate whether the mechanisms implied by this view may result in rapid speciation…
We study supercritical branching processes under the influence of an i.i.d. emigration component. We provide conditions, under which the lifetime of the process is finite respectively has a finite expectation. A new version of the…
We study a model of growing population that competes for resources. At each time step, all existing particles reproduce and the offspring randomly move to neighboring sites. Then at any site with more than one offspring, the particles are…