Related papers: Rate of Adaptive Evolution under Blending Inherita…
We are interested in modelling Darwinian evolution, resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. Our models are rooted in the microscopic, stochastic description of a population…
In large populations, multiple beneficial mutations may be simultaneously spreading. In asexual populations, these mutations must either arise on the same background or compete against each other. In sexual populations, recombination can…
We study a class of evolution models, where the breeding process involves an arbitrary exchangeable process, allowing for mutations to appear. The population size $n$ is fixed, hence after breeding, selection is applied. Individuals are…
The rate of biological evolution depends on the fixation probability and on the fixation time of new mutants. Intensive research has focused on identifying population structures that augment the fixation probability of advantageous mutants.…
The idea that there are any large-scale trends in the evolution of biological organisms is highly controversial. It is commonly believed, for example, that there is a large-scale trend in evolution towards increasing complexity, but…
Predicting evolution of expanding populations is critical to control biological threats such as invasive species and cancer metastasis. Expansion is primarily driven by reproduction and dispersal, but nature abounds with examples of…
We study the dynamics of an age-structured population in which the life expectancy of an offspring may be mutated with respect to that of its parent. When advantageous mutation is favored, the average fitness of the population grows…
Zoonotic pathogens represent a growing global risk, yet the speed of adaptive immune activation across mammalian species remains poorly understood. Despite orders-of-magnitude differences in size and metabolic rate, we show that the time to…
We consider a population of N individuals, whose dynamics through time is represented by a biparental Moran model with two types: an advantaged type and a disadvantaged type. The advantage is due to a mutation, transmitted in a Mendelian…
To approximate convolutions which occur in evolution equations with memory terms, a variable-stepsize algorithm is presented for which advancing N steps requires only O(N log(N)) operations and O(log(N)) active memory, in place of O(N^2)…
Environmental changes greatly influence the evolution of populations. Here, we study the dynamics of a population of two strains, one growing slightly faster than the other, competing for resources in a time-varying binary environment…
Although many phenotypic traits are determined by a large number of genetic variants, how a polygenic trait adapts in response to the changes in the environment is still poorly understood. Here we study the adaptation dynamics of a…
We present an approximate analytic study of our previously introduced model of evolution including the effects of genetic exchange. This model is motivated by the process of bacterial transformation. We solve for the velocity, the rate of…
We study the role of recombination, as practiced by genetically-competent bacteria, in speeding up Darwinian evolution. This is done by adding a new process to a previously-studied Markov model of evolution on a smooth fitness landscape;…
The adaptive evolution of large asexual populations is generally characterized by competition between clones carrying different beneficial mutations. This interference phenomenon slows down the adaptation speed and makes the theoretical…
An increasing number of dissident voices claim that the standard neo-Darwinian view of genes as 'leaders' and phenotypes as 'followers' during the process of adaptive evolution should be turned on its head. This idea is older than the…
Under constant selection, each trait has a fixed fitness, and small mutation rates allow populations to efficiently exploit the optimal trait. Therefore it is reasonable to expect mutation rates will evolve downwards. However, we find this…
This position paper argues that the Baldwin effect is widely misunderstood by the evolutionary computation community. The misunderstandings appear to fall into two general categories. Firstly, it is commonly believed that the Baldwin effect…
Coevolution of two species is typically thought to favour the evolution of faster evolutionary rates helping a species keep ahead in the Red Queen race, where `it takes all the running you can do to stay where you are'. In contrast, if…
Understanding the influence of an environment on the evolution of its resident population is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Great progress has been made in homogeneous population structures while heterogeneous structures have…