Related papers: Comparing fitness and drift explanations of Neande…
We consider here an extension of a previous work by Neves and Serva, still unpublished, which estimates the amount of interbreeding between anatomically modern Africans and Neandertals necessary for explaining the experimental fact that 1…
Comparisons of DNA sequences between Neandertals and present-day humans have shown that Neandertals share more genetic variants with non-Africans than with Africans. This could be due to interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans…
Considering the recent experimental discovery of Green et al that present day non-Africans have 1 to 4% of their nuclear DNA of Neanderthal origin, we propose here a model which is able to quantify the interbreeding events between Africans…
A simple mathematical homogeneous model of competition is used to describe Neanderthal extinction in Europe. It considers two interacting species, Neanderthals and Early Modern Men, in the same ecological niche. Using paleontological data…
We will give a simple, unified, possible explanation of several debated genetic issues on today's humans, Neandertals and Denisovans. In particular it is shown by means of a simple mathematical model why there is little genetic variation in…
We consider a large population of asexually reproducing individuals in absence of selective pressure. The population size is maintained constant by the environment. We find out that distances between individuals (time from the last common…
We analytically study the dynamics of evolving populations that exhibit metastability on the level of phenotype or fitness. In constant selective environments, such metastable behavior is caused by two qualitatively different mechanisms.…
The class of epistatic fitness landscapes is much more diverse than the class of non-epistatic landscapes, and so it stands to reason that there exist dynamical phenomena that can only be realized in the presence of epistasis. Here, we…
Genetic drift is stochastic fluctuations of alleles frequencies in a population due to sampling effects. We consider a model of drift in an equilibrium population, with high mutation rates: few functional mutations per generation. Such…
Fitness landscapes are mappings between genotypes, phenotypes, and fitness that shape evolution. In recent years, empirical work and theoretical models have greatly advanced our understanding of how populations navigate rugged fitness…
How fast does a population evolve from one fitness peak to another? We study the dynamics of evolving, asexually reproducing populations in which a certain number of mutations jointly confer a fitness advantage. We consider the time until a…
I review the evolutionary history of human populations in Europe with an emphasis on what has been learned in recent years through the study of ancient DNA. Human populations in Europe ~430-39kya (archaic Europeans) included Neandertals and…
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…
Quadruped animals seamlessly transition between gaits as they change locomotion speeds. While the most widely accepted explanation for gait transitions is energy efficiency, there is no clear consensus on the determining factor, nor on the…
We study the evolution of large but finite asexual populations evolving in fitness landscapes in which all mutations are either neutral or strongly deleterious. We demonstrate that despite the absence of higher fitness genotypes, adaptation…
We consider a stochastic individual-based model of adaptive dynamics for an asexually reproducing population with mutation. Biologically motivated by the influence of seasons or the variation of drug concentration during medical treatment,…
Evolutionary game theory examines how strategies spread and persist in populations through reproduction and imitation based on their fitness. Traditionally, models assume instantaneous dynamics where fitness depends on the current…
We consider an asexual population under strong selection-weak mutation conditions evolving on rugged fitness landscapes with many local fitness peaks. Unlike the previous studies in which the initial fitness of the population is assumed to…
Organisms that exploit different environments may experience a stochastic delay in adjusting their fitness when they switch habitats. We study two species whose fitness is determined by the species composition of the local environment, as…
On rugged fitness landscapes where sign epistasis is common, adaptation can often involve either individually beneficial "uphill" mutations or more complex mutational trajectories involving fitness valleys or plateaus. The dynamics of the…