Related papers: Evolutionary Fitness in Variable Environments
A model for the evolution of a finite population in a rugged fitness landscape is introduced and solved. The population is trapped in an evolutionary loop, alternating periods of stasis to periods in which it performs adaptive walks. The…
Despite major environmental and genetic differences, microbial metabolic networks are known to generate consistent physiological outcomes across vastly different organisms. This remarkable robustness suggests that, at least in bacteria,…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
We consider a general class of Markovian models describing the growth in a randomly fluctuating environment of a clonal biological population having several phenotypes related by stochastic switching. Phenotypes differ e.g. by the level of…
Is there an advantage to heterogeneity in a population where individuals grow and divide by fission? This is a broad question, to which there is no easy universal answer. This article aims to provide a quantitative answer in the specific…
Biological evolution can be conceptualized as a search process in the space of gene sequences guided by the fitness landscape, a mapping that assigns a measure of reproductive value to each genotype. Here we discuss probabilistic models of…
The functioning of animal as well as human societies fundamentally relies on cooperation. Yet, defection is often favorable for the selfish individual, and social dilemmas arise. Selection by individuals' fitness, usually the basic driving…
Microorganisms live in environments that inevitably fluctuate between mild and harsh conditions. As harsh conditions may cause extinctions, the rate at which fluctuations occur can shape microbial communities and their diversity, but we…
Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection states that the rate of change in a population's mean fitness equals its additive genetic variance in fitness. This implies that mean fitness should not decline in a constant environment,…
Selection in a time-periodic environment is modeled via the continuous-time two-player replicator dynamics, which for symmetric pay-offs reduces to the Fisher equation of mathematical genetics. For a sufficiently rapid and cyclic…
In varying environments it is beneficial for organisms to utilize available cues to infer the conditions they may encounter and express potentially favorable traits. However, external cues can be unreliable or too costly to use. We consider…
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…
Two mathematical models of macroevolution are studied. These models have population dynamics at the species level, and mutations and extinction of species are also included. The population dynamics are updated by difference equations with…
Evolutionary game theory has proved to be a powerful tool to probe the self-organisation of collective behaviour by considering frequency-dependent fitness in evolutionary processes. It has shown that the stability of a strategy depends not…
Concomitant with the evolution of biological diversity must have been the evolution of mechanisms that facilitate evolution, due to the essentially infinite complexity of protein sequence space. We describe how evolvability can be an object…
In contrast to the neutral population cycles of the deterministic mean-field Lotka--Volterra rate equations, including spatial structure and stochastic noise in models for predator-prey interactions yields complex spatio-temporal structures…
In nature microbial populations are subject to fluctuating nutrient levels. Nutrient fluctuations are important for evolutionary and ecological dynamics in microbial communities since they impact growth rates, population sizes and biofilm…
Species growing in environments that change in time and space will vary in their abundance across locations, even in the absence of persistent location preferences. Here we quantify this non-equilibrium effect by studying a minimal model of…
The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…
Understanding the relationship between complexity and stability in large dynamical systems -- such as ecosystems -- remains a key open question in complexity theory which has inspired a rich body of work developed over more than fifty…