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The puzzle associated with the cost of sex, an old problem of evolutionary biology, is discussed here from the point of view of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. The results suggest, in a simplified model, that the prevalence of sexual…
A trademark of eusocial insect species is reproductive division of labor, in which workers forego their own reproduction while the queen produces almost all offspring. The presence of the queen is key for maintaining social harmony, but the…
Seasonal influenza presents an ongoing challenge to public health. The rapid evolution of the flu virus necessitates annual vaccination campaigns, but the decision to get vaccinated or not in a given year is largely voluntary, at least in…
There are two contrasting explanations of sleep: as a proximate, essential physiological function or as an adaptive state of inactivity and these hypotheses remain widely debated. To investigate the adaptive significance of sleep, we…
The ratio of males to females in a population is a meaningful characteristic of sexual species. The reason for this biological property to be available to the observers of nature seems to be a question never asked. Introducing the notion of…
Using a lattice model based on Monte Carlo simulations, we study the role of the reproduction pattern on the fate of an evolving population. Each individual is under the selection pressure from the environment and random mutations. The…
Great apes, the other living members of our hominid family, become decrepit before the age of forty and rarely outlive their fertile years. In contrast, women - even in high mortality hunter-gatherer populations - usually remain healthy and…
This paper investigates the effects of vaccination on the dynamics of infectious disease, which is spreading in a population concurrently with awareness. The model considers contributions to the overall awareness from a global information…
One of the longstanding debates in the history of paleontology focuses on the issue of whether or not there have been long term cycles (operating over tens of millions of years) in biodiversity and extinction. Here we consider the history…
The two classic theories for the existence of sexual replication are that sex purges deleterious mutations from a population, and that sex allows a population to adapt more rapidly to changing environments. These two theories have often…
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…
Much has been debated about the benefit of sexual over asexual reproduction in terms of evolutionary fitness. Here we focus on the advantage that may be brought about by the process of mating, where the choosing of mates contributes to the…
We generalize the standard Penna bit-string model of biological ageing by assuming that each deleterious mutation diminishes the survival probability in every time interval by a small percentage. This effect is added to the usual lethal but…
The evolution of multicellularity was a major transition in the history of life on earth. Conditions under which multicellularity is favored have been studied theoretically and experimentally. But since the construction of a multicellular…
The success of an infectious disease to invade a population is strongly controlled by the population's specific connectivity structure. Here a network model is presented as an aid in understanding the role of social behavior and…
The migratory abilities of motile human spermatozoa in vivo are essential for natural fertility, but it remains a mystery what properties distinguish the tens of cells which find an egg from the millions of cells ejaculated. To reach the…
The provision of intergenerational care, via the Grandmother Hypothesis, has been implicated in the evolution of post-fertile longevity, particularly in humans. However, if grandmothering does provide fitness benefits, a key question is why…
To unveil the logic of cell from a level of chemical reaction dynamics, we need to clarify how ensemble of chemicals can autonomously produce the set of chemical, without assuming a specific external control echanism. A cell consists of a…
Cyclic dominance is frequently believed to be a mechanism that maintains diversity of competing species. But this delicate balance could also be fragile if some of the members is weakened because an extinction of a species will involve the…
A theory of aging based on the principles of the kinetics of chemical reactions and the rules of natural selection of organisms is proposed. The theory is based on a hypothesis that the biochemical processes in the organism can be described…