Related papers: The competition between simple and complex evoluti…
We study in detail a recently proposed simple discrete model for evolution on smooth landscapes. An asymptotic solution of this model for long times is constructed. We find that the dynamics of the population are governed by correlation…
We are interested in the impact of natural selection in a prey-predator community. We introduce an individual-based model of the community that takes into account both prey and predator phenotypes. Our aim is to understand the phenotypic…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
The fitness contribution of an allele at one genetic site may depend on alleles at other sites, a phenomenon known as epistasis. Epistasis can profoundly influence the process of evolution in populations under selection, and can shape the…
The concept of fitness as a measure for a species's success in natural selection is central to the theory of evolution. We here investigate how reproduction rates which are not constant but vary in response to environmental fluctuations,…
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…
Different evolutionary models are known to make disparate predictions for the success of an invading mutant in some situations. For example, some evolutionary mechanics lead to amplification of selection in structured populations, while…
In evolutionary algorithms, the fitness of a population increases with time by mutating and recombining individuals and by a biased selection of more fit individuals. The right selection pressure is critical in ensuring sufficient…
Evolvability is defined as the ability of a population to generate heritable variation to facilitate its adaptation to new environments or selection pressures. In this article, we consider evolvability as a phenotypic trait subject to…
We study the evolution of asexual microorganisms with small mutation rate in fluctuating environments, and develop techniques that allow us to expand the formal solution of the evolution equations to first order in the mutation rate. Our…
In this review some simple models of asexual populations evolving on smooth landscapes are studied. The basic model is based on a cellular automaton, which is analyzed here in the spatial mean-field limit. Firstly, the evolution on a fixed…
Mechanisms leading to speciation are a major focus in evolutionary biology. In this paper, we present and study a stochastic model of population where individuals, with type a or A, are equivalent from ecological, demographical and spatial…
We consider evolution of a large population, where fitness of each organism is defined by many phenotypical traits. These traits result from expression of many genes. We propose a new model of gene regulation, where gene expression is…
We examine the dynamics of an age-structured population model in which the life expectancy of an offspring may be mutated with respect to that of the parent. While the total population of the system always reaches a steady state, the…
Genetic diversity is central to the process of evolution. Both natural selection and random genetic drift are influenced by the level of genetic diversity of a population; selection acts on diversity while drift samples from it. At a given…
Resource are often not uniformly distributed within a population. Spatial variations of concentration of a resource, change the fitness of competing strategies locally. The notion of fitness varying with respect to both genotype and…
We explore the complex dynamical behavior of two simple predator-prey models of biological coevolution that on the ecological level account for interspecific and intraspecific competition, as well as adaptive foraging behavior. The…
The environment in which a population evolves can have a crucial impact on selection. We study evolutionary dynamics in finite populations of fixed size in a changing environment. The population dynamics are driven by birth and death…
Horizontal gene transfer consists in exchanging genetic materials between microorganisms during their lives. This is a major mechanism of bacterial evolution and is believed to be of main importance in antibiotics resistance. We consider a…
We demonstrate with a thought experiment that fitness-based population dynamical approaches to evolution are not able to make quantitative, falsifiable predictions about the long-term behavior of evolutionary systems. A key characteristic…