Related papers: Predicting patterns of long-term adaptation and ex…
Phenotypic plasticity and its evolution may help evolutionary rescue in a novel and stressful environment, especially if environmental novelty reveals cryptic genetic variation that enables the evolution of increased plasticity. However,…
We study a generic reaction-diffusion model for single-species population dynamics that includes reproduction, death, and competition. The population is assumed to be confined in a refuge beyond which conditions are so harsh that they lead…
In the long run, the eventual extinction of any biological population is an inevitable outcome. While extensive research has focused on the average time it takes for a population to go extinct under various circumstances, there has been…
In this kind of model, the main characteristic that determines population viability in the long term is the stochastic growth rate (SGR) denoted $\lambda_S$. When $\lambda_S$ is larger than one, the population grows exponentially with…
Predicting the adaptation of populations to a changing environment is crucial to assess the impact of human activities on biodiversity. Many theoretical studies have tackled this issue by modeling the evolution of quantitative traits…
The abundance of a species' population in an ecosystem is rarely stationary, often exhibiting large fluctuations over time. Using historical data on marine species, we show that the year-to-year fluctuations of population growth rate obey a…
Extinction of a long-lived isolated stochastic population can be described as an exponentially slow decay of quasi-stationary probability distribution of the population size. We address extinction of a population in a two-population system…
A demographic Allee effect occurs when individual fitness, at low densities, increases with population density. Coupled with environmental fluctuations in demographic rates, Allee effects can have subtle effects on population persistence…
Models of population growth and extinction are an increasingly popular subject of study. However, consequences of stochasticity and noise in shaping distributions and outcomes are not sufficiently explored. Here we consider a distributed…
Over the past century, nonlinear difference and differential equations have been used to understand conditions for species coexistence. However, these models fail to account for random fluctuations due to demographic and environmental…
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…
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…
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…
Understanding the relationship between a populations probability of extinction and its carrying capacity frames conservation status assessments and guides efforts to understand and mitigate the ongoing biodiversity crisis. Despite this, our…
Demographic stochasticity is important in determining extinction risks of small populations, but it is largely unknown how its effect depends on the life histories of species. We modeled effects of demographic stochasticity on extinction…
Traditionally evolution is seen as a process where from a pool of possible variations of a population (e.g. biological species or industrial goods) a few variations get selected which survive and proliferate, whereas the others vanish.…
Populations are often subject to catastrophes that cause mass removal of individuals. Many stochastic growth models have been considered to explain such dynamics. Among the results reported, it has been considered whether dispersion…
We propose a stochastic model for evolution. Births and deaths of species occur with constant probabilities. Each new species is associated with a fitness sampled from the uniform distribution on [0,1]. Every time there is a death event…
A simplified model for the growth of a population is studied in which random effects arise because reproducing individuals have a certain probability of surviving until the next breeding season and hence contributing to the next generation.…
The theory of life history evolution provides a powerful framework to understand the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens in both epidemic and endemic situations. This framework, however, relies on the assumption that pathogen populations are…