Related papers: Spatial dynamics of synthetic microbial hypercycle…

We study evolutionary processes induced by spatio-temporal dynamics in prebiotic evolution. Using numerical simulations we demonstrate that hypercycles emerge from complex interaction structures in multispecies systems. In this work we also…

Environmental heterogeneity can drive genetic heterogeneity in expanding populations; mutant strains may emerge that trade overall growth rate for an improved ability to survive in patches that are hostile to the wild type. This…

Mutualistic interactions, where individuals from different species can benefit from each other, are widespread across ecosystems. This study develops a general deterministic model of mutualism involving two populations, assuming that…

Spatial patterning can be crucially important for understanding the behavior of interacting populations. Here we investigate a simple model of parasite and host populations in which parasites are random walkers that must come into contact…

Autocatalysis is thought to have played an important role in the earliest stages of the origin of life. An autocatalytic cycle (AC) is a set of reactions that results in stoichiometric increase in its constituent chemicals. When the…

Evolving systems, be it an antibody repertoire in the face of mutating pathogens or a microbial population exposed to varied antibiotics, constantly search for adaptive solutions in time-varying fitness landscapes. Generalists correspond to…

Genetic drift at the frontiers of two-dimensional range expansions of microorganisms can frustrate local cooperation between different genetic variants, demixing the population into distinct sectors. In a biological context, mutualistic or…

An organism that is newly introduced into an existing population has a survival probability that is dependent on both the population density of its environment and the competition it experiences with the members of that population.…

Mutualistic interactions benefit both partners, promoting coexistence and genetic diversity. Spatial structure can promote cooperation, but spatial expansions may also make it hard for mutualistic partners to stay together, since genetic…

Mounting evidence indicates that our planet might experience runaway effects associated to rising temperatures and ecosystem overexploitation, leading to catastrophic shifts on short time scales. Remediation scenarios capable of…

It has been suggested that major transitions in evolution require the emergence of novelties, often associated to the cooperative behaviour of previously existing objects or agents. A key innovation involves the first cooperative…

This study investigates the role of spatial segregation, prompted by competition avoidance, as a key mechanism for emergent coexistence within microbial communities. Recognizing these communities as complex adaptive systems, we challenge…

Can prelife proceed without cell division? A recently proposed mechanism suggests that transient compartmentalization could have preceded cell division in prebiotic scenarios. Here, we study transient compartmentalization dynamics in the…

Metapopulation models have been instrumental in demonstrating the ecological impact of landscape structure on the survival of a focal species in complex environments. However, extensions to multiple species with arbitrary dispersal networks…

Artificial ecosystems provide an additional experimental tool to support laboratory work, field work, and theoretical development in competitive exclusion research. A novel application of a spatiotemporal agent based model is presented…

Emerging marine infectious diseases pose a substantial threat to marine ecosystems and the conservation of their biodiversity. Compartmental models of epidemic transmission in marine sessile organisms, available only recently, are based on…

Understanding how species persist under interacting stressors is a central challenge in ecology. We develop a spatially explicit reaction-diffusion framework to investigate competing species in landscapes shaped by climate variability,…

Biological evolution of a population is governed by the fitness landscape, which is a map from genotype to fitness. However, a fitness landscape depends on the organisms environment, and evolution in changing environments is still poorly…

Conjugation is the primary mechanism of horizontal gene transfer that spreads antibiotic resistance among bacteria. Although conjugation normally occurs in surface-associated growth (e.g., biofilms), it has been traditionally studied in…

Given an endogenous timescale set by invasion in a constant environment, we introduced periodic temporal variation in competitive superiority by alternating the species' propagation rates. By manipulating habitat size and introduction rate,…