Related papers: A hypothesis in evolutionary biology
Understanding the influence of an environment on the evolution of its resident population is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Great progress has been made in homogeneous population structures while heterogeneous structures have…
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…
Motivated by the cyclic pattern of reproductive regimes observed in some species of green flies (``{\it aphids}''), we simulate the evolution of a population enduring harsh seasonal conditions for survival. The reproductive regime of each…
In the spirit of the many recent simple models of evolution inspired by statistical physics, we put forward a simple model of the evolution of such models. Like its objects of study, it is (one supposes) in principle testable and capable of…
Using a bit-string model of evolution, we find a successful route to diploidy and sex in simple organisms. Allowing the sexually reproducing diploid individuals to also perform mitosis, as they do in a haploid-diploid cycle, leads to the…
The mechanisms underlying eco-evolutionary dynamics (the feedback between ecological and evolutionary processes) are often unknown. Here, we propose that classical theory from behavioral ecology can provide a greater understanding of the…
How much meaning influences gender assignment across languages is an active area of research in linguistics and cognitive science. We can view current approaches as aiming to determine where gender assignment falls on a spectrum, from being…
The theory of lithopanspermia proposes the natural exchange of organisms between solar system bodies through meteorites. The focus of this theory comprises three distinct stages: planetary ejection, interplanetary transit and planetary…
Ecological and evolutionary processes show various population dynamics depending on internal interactions and environmental changes. While crucial in predicting biological processes, discovering general relations for such nonlinear dynamics…
We review models of biological evolution in which the population frequency changes deterministically with time. If the population is self-replicating, although the equations for simple prototypes can be linearised, nonlinear equations arise…
Human communication systems, such as language, evolve culturally; their components undergo reproduction and variation. However, a role for selection in cultural evolutionary dynamics is less clear. Often neutral evolution (also known as…
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…
We assume that the natural intelligence (human, particularly) is equivalent to a large inferring structure, which took shape in the last 400/500 million years. Then two hypotheses, about this structure and its development, are put forward…
Computer experiments that mirror the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual organisms as they occur in nature, tested features proposed to explain the evolution of sexual recombination. Results show that this evolution is better…
The theory of natural selection has two forms. Deductive theory describes how populations change over time. One starts with an initial population and some rules for change. From those assumptions, one calculates the future state of the…
We consider a population of haploid individuals reproducing sexually, i.e. for which the genome of each individual is a random mixture of the genome of its two parents. We assume that initially one individual carries a mutation at one…
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…
Evolutionary game theory is a successful mathematical framework geared towards understanding the selective pressures that affect the evolution of the strategies of agents engaged in interactions with potential conflicts. While a…
Clonal interference, competition between multiple co-occurring beneficial mutations, has a major role in adaptation of asexual populations. We provide a simple individual based stochastic model of clonal interference taking into account a…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. It is well known that population structure can affect evolutionary dynamics. Traditionally, natural selection is studied between mutants that differ in reproductive rate, but are…