Related papers: Mechanisms of rapid evolution
Motivated by the results of recent laboratory experiments (Yoshida et al. Nature, 424, 303-306 (2003)) as well as many earlier field observations that evolutionary changes can take place in ecosystems over relatively short ecological time…
Existing theoretical models of evolution focus on the relative fitness advantages of different mutants in a population while the dynamic behavior of the population size is mostly left unconsidered. We here present a generic stochastic model…
We consider adaptive change of diet of a predator population that switches its feeding between two prey populations. We develop a novel 1 fast--3 slow dynamical system to describe the dynamics of the three populations amidst continuous but…
We attempt to provide a comprehensive model of evolution of science across millennia taking into account the contributions of other intellectual traditions, cultural value system and increasing in sophistication of humans in their study of…
Population structure can be modelled by evolutionary graphs, which can have a substantial, but very subtle influence on the fate of the arising mutants. Individuals are located on the nodes of these graphs, competing with each other to…
The fast-slow dynamics of an eco-evolutionary system are studied, where we consider the feedback actions of environmental resources that are classified into those that are self-renewing and those externally supplied. We show although these…
We consider the effect of network structure on the evolution of a population. Models of this kind typically consider a population of fixed size and distribution. Here we consider eco-evolutionary dynamics where population size and…
Ecology studies biodiversity in its variety and complexity. It describes how species distribute and perform in response to environmental changes. Ecological processes and structures are highly complex and adaptive. In order to quantify…
Populations of species in ecosystems are often constrained by availability of resources within their environment. In effect this means that a growth of one population, needs to be balanced by comparable reduction in populations of others.…
The possibility of complicated dynamic behaviour driven by non-linear feedbacks in dynamical systems has revolutionized science in the latter part of the last century. Yet despite examples of complicated frequency dynamics, the possibility…
Is evolution always gradual or can it make leaps? We examine a mathematical model of an evolutionary process on a fitness landscape and obtain analytic solutions for the probability of multi-mutation leaps, that is, several mutations…
It has been hypothesized that in the era just before the last universal common ancestor emerged, life on earth was fundamentally collective. Ancient life forms shared their genetic material freely through massive horizontal gene transfer…
Migration between different habitats is ubiquitous among biological populations. In this Letter, we study a simple quasispecies model for evolution in two different habitats, with different fitness landscapes, coupled through one-way…
Antigenic escape constitutes the main mechanism allowing rapidly evolving viruses to achieve endemicity. Beyond granting immune escape, empirical evidence also suggests that mutations of viruses might increase their inter-host…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
A major obstacle in analyzing the evolution of information exchange and processing is our insufficient understanding of the underlying signaling and decision-making biological mechanisms. For instance, it is unclear why are humans unique in…
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 explore how questions related to developing a sustainable human civilization can be cast in terms of astrobiology. In particular we show how ongoing astrobiological studies of the coupled relationship between life, planets and their…
At any moment in time, evolution is faced with a formidable challenge: refining the already highly optimised design of biological species, a feat accomplished through all preceding generations. In such a scenario, the impact of random…
This chapter is about Complexity and Spatial Dynamics in Urban Systems. Strong inequalities in the size of cities and the apparent difficulty of limiting their growth raise practical issues for spatial planning. At a time when new…