Related papers: Genetic Drift and Mutation
We are interested in populations in which the fitness of different genetic types fluctuates in time and space, driven by temporal and spatial fluctuations in the environment. For simplicity, our population is assumed to be composed of just…
When polygenic traits are under stabilizing selection, many different combinations of alleles allow close adaptation to the optimum. If alleles have equal effects, all combinations that result in the same deviation from the optimum are…
Population structure has been known to substantially affect evolutionary dynamics. Networks that promote the spreading of fitter mutants are called amplifiers of natural selection, and those that suppress the spreading of fitter mutants are…
We introduce a theory of sequential causal inference in which learners in a chain estimate a structural model from their upstream teacher and then pass samples from the model to their downstream student. It extends the population dynamics…
We propose a Markov chain approach for the evolution of a genealogical line of genomes. Our idealized genome has $N$ sites and each site can be in state $0$ or $1$. At each time step we pick a site at random. If the site is in state $0$ we…
It has been a puzzling question why some organisms reproduce sexually. Fisher and Muller hypothesized that reproducing by sex can speed up the evolution. They explained that in the sexual reproduction, recombination can combine beneficial…
One of the problems in applying Genetic Algorithm is that there is some situation where the evolutionary process converges too fast to a solution which causes it to be trapped in local optima. To overcome this problem, a proper diversity in…
Cooperation is ubiquitous across all levels of biological systems ranging from microbial communities to human societies. It, however, seemingly contradicts the evolutionary theory, since cooperators are exploited by free-riders and thus are…
I study a population model in which the reproduction rate lambda is inherited with mutation, favoring fast reproducers in the short term, but conflicting with a process that eliminates agglomerations of individuals. The model is a variant…
In classical evolutionary theory, genetic variation provides the source of heritable phenotypic variation on which natural selection acts. Against this classical view, several theories have emphasized that developmental variability and…
The application of Genetic Programming to the discovery of empirical laws is often impaired by the huge size of the search space, and consequently by the computer resources needed. In many cases, the extreme demand for memory and CPU is due…
A branching process in random environment $(Z_n, n \in \N)$ is a generalization of Galton Watson processes where at each generation the reproduction law is picked randomly. In this paper we give several results which belong to the class of…
Motivated by the wide range of known self-replicating systems, some far from genetics, we study a system composed by individuals having an internal dynamics with many possible states that are partially stable, with varying mutation rates.…
Geographic structure can affect patterns of genetic differentiation and speciation rates. In this article, we investigate the dynamics of genetic distances in a geographically structured metapopulation. We model the metapopulation as a…
We discuss two different ways of chromosomes' and genomes' evolution. Purifying selection dominates in large panmictic populations, where Mendelian law of independent gene assortment is valid. If the populations are small, recombination…
Population genetics lies at the heart of evolutionary theory. This topic forms part of many biological science curricula but is rarely taught to physics students. Since physicists are becoming increasingly interested in biological…
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…
Range expansion and range shifts are crucial population responses to climate change. Genetic consequences are not well understood but are clearly coupled to ecological dynamics that, in turn, are driven by shifting climate conditions. We…
The influence of migration on the stochastic dynamics of subdivided populations is still an open issue in various evolutionary models. We develop here a self-consistent mean-field-like method in order to determine the effects of migration…
The dynamics of two competing species in a finite size community is one of the most studied problems in population genetics and community ecology. Stochastic fluctuations lead, inevitably, to the extinction of one of the species, but the…