Related papers: A hypothesis in evolutionary biology
We present an individual based model of evolutionary ecology. The reproduction rate of individuals characterized by their genome depends on the composition of the population in genotype space. Ecological features such as the taxonomy and…
Genetic information and environmental factors determine the path of an individuals life and therefore, the evolution of its entire species. We have succeeded in proposing and studying a model that captures this idea. In our model, a…
The effects of error propagation in the reproduction of diploid organisms are studied within the populational genetics framework of the quasispecies model. The dependence of the error threshold on the dominance parameter is fully…
A central biological question is how natural organisms are so evolvable (capable of quickly adapting to new environments). A key driver of evolvability is the widespread modularity of biological networks--their organization as functional,…
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…
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 compare the speed with which a sexual, respectively an asexual, population is able to respond to a biased selective pressure. Our model focuses on the Weismann hypothesis that the extra variation caused by crossing-over and recombination…
Individuals of different types, may it be genetic, cultural, or else, with different levels of fitness often compete for reproduction and survival. A fitter type generally has higher chances of disseminating their copies to other…
The paper discusses a connection between asymmetric reproduction -- that is reproduction in a parent-child relationship where the parent does not mutate during reproduction --, the fact that all non-viral lifeforms bear genes of their…
Evolution by natural selection can be seen an algorithm for generating creative solutions to difficult problems. More precisely, evolution by natural selection is a class of algorithms that share a set of properties. The question we address…
In human societies the probability of strategy adoption from a given person may be affected by the personal features. Now we investigate how an artificially imposed restricted ability to reproduce, overruling ones fitness, affects an…
Language evolution might have preferred certain prior social configurations over others. Experiments conducted with models of different social structures (varying subgroup interactions and the role of a dominant interlocutor) suggest that…
We have analyzed the relations between the mutational pressure, recombination and selection pressure in the bit-string model with sexual reproduction. For specific sets of these parameters we have found three phase transitions with one…
Background: Speciation corresponds to the progressive establishment of reproductive barriers between groups of individuals derived from an ancestral stock. Since Darwin did not believe that reproductive barriers could be selected for, he…
Natural selection favors the more successful individuals. This is the elementary premise that pervades common models of evolution. Under extreme conditions, however, the process may no longer be probabilistic. Those that meet certain…
In its initial form, the expensive son hypothesis postulates that sons from male-biased sexually dimorphic species require more food during growth than daughters, which ultimately incur fitness costs for mothers predominantly producing and…
Recently, an evolutionary game dynamics model taking into account the environmental feedback has been proposed to describe the co-evolution of strategic actions of a population of individuals and the state of the surrounding environment;…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
Evolutionary graph theory has grown to be an area of intense study. Despite the amount of interest in the field, it seems to have grown separate from other subfields of population genetics and evolution. In the current work I introduce the…
Same-sex sexual behavior is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, but its adaptive origins remain a prominent puzzle. Here I suggest the possibility that same-sex sexual behavior arises as a consequence of the competition between an…