Related papers: Evolution of adaptation mechanisms: adaptation ene…
The concept of biological adaptation was closely connected to some mathematical, engineering and physical ideas from the very beginning. Cannon in his "The wisdom of the body" (1932) used the engineering vision of regulation. In 1938, Selye…
In 1987, we analyzed the changes in correlation graphs between various features of the organism during stress and adaptation. After 33 years of research of many authors, discoveries and rediscoveries, we can say with complete confidence: It…
Adaptation is used by biological sensory systems to respond to a wide range of environmental signals, by adapting their response properties to the statistics of the stimulus in order to maximize information transmission. We derive rules of…
Genetic information and environmental factors determine the path of an individuals life and therefore, the evolution of its entire species. We have succeeded in proposing and studying a model that captures this idea. In our model, a…
All living things exhibit adaptations that enable them to survive and reproduce in the natural environment that they inhabit. From a biological standpoint, it has long been understood that adaptation comes from natural selection, whereby…
This paper introduces a novel approach to quantifying ecological resilience in biological systems, particularly focusing on noisy systems responding to episodic disturbances with sudden adaptations. Incorporating concepts from…
We analyze a nonlocal PDE model describing the dynamics of adaptation of a phenotypically structured population, under the effects of mutation and selection, in a changing environment. Previous studies have analyzed the large-time behavior…
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…
Evolution in changing environments is an important, but little studied aspect of the theory of evolution. The idea of adaptive walks in fitness landscapes has triggered a vast amount of research and has led to many important insights about…
Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will…
Adaptation in a fluctuating environment is a process of fueling environmental information to gain fitness. Living systems have gradually developed strategies for adaptation from random and passive diversification of the phenotype to more…
Adaptation is a central topic in theoretical biology, of practical importance for analyzing drug resistance mutations. Several authors have used arguments based on extreme value theory in their work on adaptation. There are complications…
One essential ingredient of evolutionary theory is the concept of fitness as a measure for a species' success in its living conditions. Here, we quantify the effect of environmental fluctuations onto fitness by analytical calculations on a…
Existing theories for the evolution of aging and death treat senescence as a side-effect of strong selection for fertility. These theories are well-developed mathematically, but fit poorly with emerging experimental data. The data suggest…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
At any moment in time, evolution is faced with a formidable challenge: refining the already highly optimised design of biological species, a feat accomplished through all preceding generations. In such a scenario, the impact of random…
We are living in an uncertain and dynamically changing world, where optimal decision-making under uncertainty is directly linked to the survival of species. However, evolutionary selection pressures that shape value-based decision-making…
Biological organisms are adaptive, able to function in unpredictably changing environments. Drawing on recent nonequilibrium physics, we show that in adaptation, fitness has two components parameterized by observable coordinates: a static…
Production of energy is a foundation of life. Metabolic rate of organisms (amount of energy produced per unit time) generally increases slower than organisms' mass, which has important implications for life organization. This phenomenon,…
In this work we employ various methods of analysis (unfolding simulations and comparative analysis of structures and sequences of proteomes of thermophilic organisms) to show that organisms can follow two major strategies of thermophilic…