Related papers: Mechanisms of rapid evolution
The interpretation of recent environmental genomics data exposes the far-reaching influence of horizontal gene transfer, and is changing our basic concepts of organism, species and evolution itself.
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Eco-evolutionary dynamics, or eco-evolution for short, are thought to involve rapid demography (ecology) and equally rapid phenotypic changes (evolution) leading to novel, emergent system behaviours. This focus on contemporary dynamics is…
Due to the conventional distinction between ecological (rapid) and evolutionary (slow)timescales, ecological and population models to date have typically ignored the effects of evolution. Yet the potential for rapid evolutionary change has…
1. Theoretical models pertaining to feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes are prevalent in multiple biological fields. An integrative overview is currently lacking, due to little crosstalk between the fields and the use of…
The basic mechanics of evolution have been understood since Darwin. But debate continues over whether macroevolutionary phenomena are driven primary by the fitness structure of genotype space or by ecological interaction. In this paper we…
A simple model of species origin resulted from dynamic features of a population, solely, is developed. The model is based on the evolution optimality in space distribution, and the selection is gone over the mobility. Some biological issues…
Horizontal gene transfer consists in exchanging genetic materials between microorganisms during their lives. This is a major mechanism of bacterial evolution and is believed to be of main importance in antibiotics resistance. We consider a…
Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…
We propose a simple model for genetic adaptation to a changing environment, describing a fitness landscape characterized by two maxima. One is associated with "specialist" individuals that are adapted to the environment; this maximum moves…
We introduce a model to study the impact of catastrophes on evolutionary paths. If we do not allow catastrophes the number of changes in the maximum fitness of a population grows logarithmically with respect to time. Allowing catastrophes…
Cooperation is a widespread natural phenomenon yet current evolutionary thinking is dominated by the paradigm of selfish competition. Recent advanced in many fronts of Biology and Non-linear Physics are helping to bring cooperation to its…
The idea that there are any large-scale trends in the evolution of biological organisms is highly controversial. It is commonly believed, for example, that there is a large-scale trend in evolution towards increasing complexity, but…
Ecology and evolution are inseparable. Motivated by some recent experiments, we have developed models of evolutionary ecology from the perspective of dynamic networks. In these models, in addition to the intra-node dynamics, which…
Motivated by present activities in (statistical) physics directed towards biological evolution, we review the interplay of three evolutionary forces: mutation, selection, and genetic drift. The review addresses itself to physicists and…
Anthropogenic changes of the biota and human hyper-dominance are modulating the evolution of life on our planet. Humankind has spread worldwide supported by cultural and technological knowledge, and has already modified uncountable…
Evolution is the fundamental physical process that gives rise to biological phenomena. Yet it is widely treated as a subset of population genetics, and thus its scope is artificially limited. As a result, the key issues of how rapidly…
Eco-evolutionary game dynamics which characterizes the mutual interactions and the coupled evolutions of strategies and environments has been of growing interests in very recent years. Since such feedback loops widely exist in a range of…
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;…
We explore the connection between migration patterns and emergent behaviors of evolving populations in spatially heterogeneous environments. Despite extensive studies in ecologically and medically important systems, a unifying framework…