Related papers: Competing metabolic strategies in a multilevel sel…
The evolution of cooperation often depends upon population structure, yet nearly all models of cooperation implicitly assume that this structure remains static. This is a simplifying assumption, because most organisms possess genetic traits…
Interactions among multiple infectious agents are increasingly recognized as a fundamental issue in the understanding of key questions in public health, regarding pathogen emergence, maintenance, and evolution. The full description of…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
We compare and contrast the long-time dynamical properties of two individual-based models of biological coevolution. Selection occurs via multispecies, stochastic population dynamics with reproduction probabilities that depend nonlinearly…
Population-level scaling in ecological systems arises from individual growth and death with competitive constraints. We build on a minimal dynamical model of metabolic growth where the tension between individual growth and mortality…
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…
The paper explores the influence of harvesting (or culling) on the outcome of the competition of two species in a spatially heterogeneous environment. The harvesting effort is assumed to be proportional to the space-dependent intrinsic…
Dispersal is an important strategy that allows organisms to locate and exploit favorable habitats. The question arises: given competition in a spatially heterogeneous landscape, what is the optimal rate of dispersal? Continuous population…
The interaction between natural selection and random mutation is frequently debated in recent years. Does similar dilemma also exist in the evolution of real networks such as biological networks? In this paper, we try to discuss this issue…
Consider a species whose population density solves the steady diffusive logistic equation in a heterogeneous environment modeled with the help of a spatially non constant coefficient standing for a resources distribution in a given box. We…
All life, including cells and artificial protocells, must integrate diverse molecules into a single unit in order to reproduce. Despite expected pressure to evolve a simple system with the fastest replication speed, the mechanism by which…
We study a minimal model for the growth of a phenotypically heterogeneous population of cells subject to a fluctuating environment in which they can replicate (by exploiting available resources) and modify their phenotype within a given…
In this study, we couple a population dynamics model with a model for optimal foraging to study the interdependence between individual-level cost-benefits and population-scale dynamics. Specifically, we study the logistic growth model,…
Genetic fitness optimization using small populations or small population updates across generations generally suffers from randomly diverging evolutions. We propose a notion of highly probable fitness optimization through feasible…
We analyze evolutionary dynamics in a confluent, branching cellular population, such as in a growing duct, vasculature, or in a branching microbial colony. We focus on the coarse-grained features of the evolution and build a statistical…
Collective sensing is an emergent phenomenon which enables individuals to estimate a hidden property of the environment through the observation of social interactions. Previous work on collective sensing shows that gregarious individuals…
Microbial populations exhibit a broad spectrum of nutrient utilization strategies, ranging from strategies utilizing diverse nutrients, called "generalists," to those being highly adapted to specific nutrients, called "specialists." 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,…
Background: Recent experimental and theoretical studies have shown that small asexual populations evolving on complex fitness landscapes may achieve a higher fitness than large ones due to the increased heterogeneity of adaptive…
Biological and social scientists have long been interested in understanding how to reconcile individual and collective interests in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Many effective strategies have been proposed, and they are often categorized…