Related papers: Evolution as a coexistence mechanism: Does genetic…
The dynamics of many microbial ecosystems are driven by cross-feeding interactions, in which metabolites excreted by some species are metabolised further by others. The population dynamics of such ecosystems are governed by…
What determines biodiversity in nature is a prominent issue in ecology, especially in biotic resource systems that are typically devoid of cross-feeding. Here, we show that by incorporating pairwise encounters among consumer individuals…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…
Species extinction occurs regularly and unavoidably in ecological systems. The time scales for extinction can broadly vary and inform on the ecosystem's stability. We study the spatio-temporal extinction dynamics of a paradigmatic…
Many mathematical frameworks of evolutionary game dynamics assume that the total population size is constant and that selection affects only the relative frequency of strategies. Here, we consider evolutionary game dynamics in an extended…
We use the optimal foraging theory to study coexistence between two plant species and a generalist pollinator. We compare conditions for plant coexistence for non-adaptive vs. adaptive pollinators that adjust their foraging strategy to…
We use dynamical generating functionals to study the stability and size of communities evolving in Lotka-Volterra systems with random interaction coefficients. The size of the eco-system is not set from the beginning. Instead, we start from…
Environmental variability greatly influences the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a population, i.e. it affects how its size and composition evolve. Here, we study a well-mixed population of finite and fluctuating size whose growth is limited…
The evolutionary spread of cheater strategies can destabilize populations engaging in cooperative behaviors, thus demonstrating that evolutionary changes can have profound implications for populations dynamics. At the same time, the…
Time evolution of number of species (genera, families, and others), population of them, and size distribution of present ones and life times are studied in terms of a new model, where population of each genetic taxon increases by a (random)…
We study a version of the Tangled Nature model of evolutionary ecology redefined in a phenotype space where mutants have properties correlated to their parents. The model has individual-based dynamics whilst incorporating species scale…
Preserving biodiversity and ecosystem stability is a challenge that can be pursued through modern statistical mechanics modeling. Here we introduce a variational maximum entropy-based algorithm to evaluate the entropy in a minimal ecosystem…
In this paper we study the long term dynamics of two prey species and one predator species. In the deterministic setting, if we assume the interactions are of Lotka-Volterra type (competition or predation), the long term behavior of this…
Cooperation and competition coexist and coevolve in natural and social systems. Cooperation generates resources, which in turn, drive non-cooperative competition to secure individual shares. How this complex interplay between cooperation…
Isolated populations ultimately go extinct because of the intrinsic noise of elementary processes. In multi-population systems extinction of a population may occur via more than one route. We investigate this generic situation in a simple…
Explaining biodiversity is a fundamental issue in ecology. A long-standing puzzle lies in the paradox of the plankton: many species of plankton feeding on a limited variety of resources coexist, apparently flouting the competitive exclusion…
We study the evolution of cooperation in structured populations within popular models of social dilemmas, whereby simple coevolutionary rules are introduced that may enhance players abilities to enforce their strategy on the opponent.…
Explaining how competing species coexist remains a central question in ecology. The well-known competitive exclusion principle (CEP) states that two species competing for the same resource cannot stably coexist, and more generally, that the…
The emerging field of high-throughput compartmentalized in vitro evolution is a promising new approach to protein engineering. In these experiments, libraries of mutant genotypes are randomly distributed and expressed in microscopic…
Between-species coevolution, and in particular antagonistic host-parasite coevolution, is a major process shaping within-species diversity. In this paper we investigate the role of various stochastic processes affecting the outcome of the…