Related papers: On the feasibility of saltational evolution
A model of mutation rate evolution for multiple loci under arbitrary selection is analyzed. Results are obtained using techniques from Karlin (1982) that overcome the weak selection constraints needed for tractability in prior studies of…
Molecular phenotypes link genomic information with organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Quantitative traits are complex phenotypes that depend on multiple genomic loci. In this paper, we study the adaptive evolution of a…
A key question in evolution is how likely a mutant is to take over. This depends on natural selection and on stochastic fluctuations. Population spatial structure can impact mutant fixation probabilities. We introduce a model for structured…
There are two contrasting explanations of sleep: as a proximate, essential physiological function or as an adaptive state of inactivity and these hypotheses remain widely debated. To investigate the adaptive significance of sleep, we…
Expression level is known to be a strong determinant of a protein's rate of evolution. But the converse can also be true: evolutionary dynamics can affect expression levels of proteins. Having implications in both directions fosters the…
Genome rearrangements are evolutionary events that shuffle genomic architectures. Most frequent genome rearrangements are reversals, translocations, fusions, and fissions. While there are some more complex genome rearrangements such as…
Consider a mathematical model of evolutionary adaptation of fitness landscape and mutation matrix as a reaction to population changes. As a basis, we use an open quasispecies model, which is modified to include explicit death flow. We…
Random walks on multidimensional nonlinear landscapes are of interest in many areas of science and engineering. In particular, properties of adaptive trajectories on fitness landscapes determine population fates and thus play a central role…
Epochal dynamics, in which long periods of stasis in an evolving population are punctuated by a sudden burst of change, is a common behavior in both natural and artificial evolutionary processes. We analyze the population dynamics for a…
We demonstrate with a thought experiment that fitness-based population dynamical approaches to evolution are not able to make quantitative, falsifiable predictions about the long-term behavior of evolutionary systems. A key characteristic…
We propose a minimal model of the dynamics of diversity -- replicator equations with extinction, invasion and mutation. We numerically study the behavior of this simple model and show that it displays completely different behavior from the…
The emergence of collective cooperation in competitive environments is a well-known phenomenon in biology, economics, and social systems. While most evolutionary game models focus on the evolution of strategies for a fixed game, how…
Recurrent mutations are a common phenomenon in population genetics. They may be at the origin of the fixation of a new genotype, if they give a phenotypic advantage to the carriers of the new mutation. In this paper, we are interested in…
The emergence of complex patterns of organization close to the Cambrian boundary is known to have happened over a (geologically) short period of time. It involved the rapid diversification of body plans and stands as one of the major…
We consider the evolution of populations under the joint action of mutation and differential reproduction, or selection. The population is modelled as a finite-type Markov branching process in continuous time, and the associated…
We study a model of stochastic evolutionary game dynamics in which the probabilities that agents choose suboptimal actions are dependent on payoff consequences. We prove a sample path large deviation principle, characterizing the rate of…
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…
Due to stochastic fluctuations arising from finite population size, known as genetic drift, the ability of a population to explore a rugged fitness landscape depends on its size. In the weak mutation regime, while the mean steady-state…
Evolutionary adaptation is often likened to climbing a hill or peak. While this process is simple for fitness landscapes where mutations are independent, the interaction between mutations (epistasis) as well as mutations at loci that affect…
We consider an individual-based spatially structured population for Darwinian evolution in an asexual population. The individuals move randomly on a bounded continuous space according to a reflected brownian motion. The dynamics involves…