Related papers: Evolution at the edge of expanding populations
Bacteriophages spreading through populations of bacteria offer relatively simple, tuneable systems for testing mathematical models of range expansion. However, such models typically assume a static state into which to expand, which is not…
Biological evolution depends on the passing down to subsequent generations of genetic information encoding beneficial traits, and on the removal of unfit individuals by a selection mechanism. However, selection acts on phenotypes, and is…
Fitness consequence of dispersal depends on property of the entire landscape, which patches are available and what are the cost of moving. These are information that are not available locally when an organism make the decision to disperse.…
Based on a recent model of evolving viruses competing with an adapting immune system [1], we study the conditions under which a viral quasispecies can maximize its growth rate. The range of mutation rates that allows viruses to thrive is…
We consider a population spreading across a finite number of sites. Individuals can move from one site to the other according to a network (oriented links between the sites) that vary periodically over time. On each site, the population…
Motivated by tumor growth and spatial population genetics, we study the interplay between evolutionary and spatial dynamics at the surfaces of three-dimensional, spherical range expansions. We consider range expansion radii that grow with…
The environment in which a population evolves can have a crucial impact on selection. We study evolutionary dynamics in finite populations of fixed size in a changing environment. The population dynamics are driven by birth and death…
McNamara and Dall (2011) identified novel relationships between the abundance of a species in different environments, the temporal properties of environmental change, and selection for or against dispersal. Here, the mathematics underlying…
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…
We study the interplay of population growth and evolutionary dynamics using a stochastic model based on birth and death events. In contrast to the common assumption of an independent population size, evolution can be strongly affected by…
We use traveling-wave theory to derive expressions for the rate of accumulation of deleterious mutations under Muller's ratchet and the speed of adaptation under positive selection in asexual populations. Traveling-wave theory is a…
Evolutionary games on graphs describe how strategic interactions and population structure determine evolutionary success, quantified by the probability that a single mutant takes over a population. Graph structures, compared to the…
Unraveling patterns of animals' movements is important for understanding the fundamental basics of biogeography, tracking range shifts resulting from climate change, predicting and preventing biological invansions. Many researchers have…
We investigate the evolutionary rescue of a microbial population in a gradually deteriorating environment, through a combination of analytical calculations and stochastic simulations. We consider a population destined for extinction in the…
In exponentially proliferating populations of microbes, the population typically doubles at a rate less than the average doubling time of a single-cell due to variability at the single-cell level. It is known that the distribution of…
Invasion fronts in ecology are well studied but very few mathematical results concern the case with variable motility (possibly due to mutations). Based on an apparently simple reaction-diffusion equation, we explain the observed phenomena…
Natural selection and random drift are competing phenomena for explaining the evolution of populations. Combining a highly fit mutant with a population structure that improves the odds that the mutant spreads through the whole population…
The expansion of a population into new habitat is a transient process that leaves its footprints in the genetic composition of the expanding population. How the structure of the environment shapes the population front and the evolutionary…
Theory predicts rapid genetic drift during invasions, yet many expanding populations maintain high genetic diversity. We find that genetic drift is dramatically suppressed when dispersal rates increase with the population density because…
In evolutionary game dynamics, reproductive success increases with the performance in an evolutionary game. If strategy $A$ performs better than strategy $B$, strategy $A$ will spread in the population. Under stochastic dynamics, a single…