Related papers: Evolution of a Fluctuating Population in a Randoml…
Conventional wisdom suggests that environmental noise drives populations toward extinction. In contrast, we report a paradoxical phenomenon in which stochasticity reverses a deterministic tipping point, thereby preventing collapse. Using a…
Fluctuations in diversity and extinction sizes are discussed and compared for two different, individual-based models of biological coevolution. Both models display power-law distributions for various quantities of evolutionary interest,…
Many types of bacteria can survive under stress by switching stochastically between two different phenotypes: the "normals" who multiply fast, but are vulnerable to stress, and the "persisters" who hardly multiply, but are resilient to…
Essential to each other, growth and exploration are jointly observed in populations, be it alive such as animals and cells or inanimate such as goods and money. But their ability to move, crucial to cope with uncertainty and optimize…
Mutations in a microbial population can increase the frequency of a genotype not only by increasing its exponential growth rate, but also by decreasing its lag time or adjusting the yield (resource efficiency). The contribution of multiple…
The observation that phenotypic variability is ubiquitous in isogenic populations has led to a multitude of experimental and theoretical studies seeking to probe the causes and consequences of this variability. Whether it be in the context…
Competition between random genetic drift and natural selection plays a central role in evolution: Whereas non-beneficial mutations often prevail in small populations by chance, mutations that sweep through large populations typically confer…
Deterministic evolutionary theory robustly predicts that populations displaying altruistic behaviours will be driven to extinction by mutant cheats that absorb common benefits but do not themselves contribute. Here we show that when…
We propose a general model to study the interplay between spatial dispersal and environment spatiotemporal fluctuations in metapopulation dynamics. An ecological landscape of favorable patches is generated like a L\'{e}vy dust, which allows…
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…
We study the role of the noise in the dynamics of two competing species. We consider generalized Lotka-Volterra equations in the presence of a multiplicative noise, which models the interaction between the species and the environment. The…
In many biological processes, the size of a population changes stochastically with time, and recent work in the context of cancer and bacterial growth have focused on the situation when the mean population size grows exponentially. Here,…
We study the stochastic evolution of four species in cyclic competition in a well mixed environment. In systems composed of a finite number $N$ of particles these simple interaction rules result in a rich variety of extinction scenarios,…
We investigate the competing effects and relative importance of intrinsic demographic and environmental variability on the evolutionary dynamics of a stochastic two-species Lotka-Volterra model by means of Monte Carlo simulations on a…
Phase variation, or stochastic switching between alternative states of gene expression, is common among microbes, and may be important in coping with changing environments. We use a theoretical model to assess whether such switching is a…
Many physical and natural systems, including the population of species, evolve in habitats with spatial stochastic variations of the individuals' motility. We study here the effect of those fluctuations on invasion and genetic loss. A…
Previously, we developed a population model incorporating the Allee effect and periodic environmental fluctuations, in which organisms alternate between nomadic and colonial behaviours. This switching strategy is regulated by biological…
We consider a population model in which the season alternates between winter and summer, and individuals can acquire mutations either that are advantageous in the summer and disadvantageous in the winter, or vice versa. Also, we assume that…
Since steep declines in a population's size also typically alter its composition, population bottlenecks are considered highly important for evolution. However, despite such significance, the mechanisms governing the impact of a given…
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…