Related papers: Non-genetic variability: survival strategy or nuis…
Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…
One essential ingredient of evolutionary theory is the concept of fitness as a measure for a species' success in its living conditions. Here, we quantify the effect of environmental fluctuations onto fitness by analytical calculations on a…
Conventional population genetics considers the evolution of a limited number of genotypes corresponding to phenotypes with different fitness. As model phenotypes, in particular RNA secondary structure, have become computationally tractable,…
Stochastic models of sequential mutation acquisition are widely used to quantify cancer and bacterial evolution. Across manifold scenarios, recurrent research questions are: how many cells are there with $n$ alterations, and how long will…
Evolutionary game theory has proven to be an elegant framework providing many fruitful insights in population dynamics and human behaviour. Here, we focus on the aspect of behavioural plasticity and its effect on the evolution of…
Cells are able to generate phenotypic diversity both during development and in response to stressful and changing environments, aiding survival. The biologically and medically vital process of a cell assuming a functionally important fate…
Over the past century, nonlinear difference and differential equations have been used to understand conditions for species coexistence. However, these models fail to account for random fluctuations due to demographic and environmental…
Phenotypic fluctuations and plasticity can generally affect the course of evolution, a process known as the Baldwin effect. Several studies have recast this effect and claimed that phenotypic plasticity acceler- ates evolutionary rate (the…
Mutation rate is a key determinant of the pace as well as outcome of evolution, and variability in this rate has been shown in different scenarios to play a key role in evolutionary adaptation and resistance evolution under stress caused by…
We present a model for evolving population which maintains genetic polymorphism. By introducing random mutation in the model population at a constant rate, we observe that the population does not become extinct but survives, keeping…
The unwelcome evolution of malignancy during cancer progression emerges through a selection process in a complex heterogeneous population structure. In the present work, we investigate evolutionary dynamics in a phenotypically heterogeneous…
We study macroevolutionary dynamics by extending microevolutionary competition models to long time scales. It has been shown that for a general class of competition models, gradual evolutionary change in continuous phenotypes (evolutionary…
A fundamental feature of collective cell migration is phenotypic heterogeneity which, for example, influences tumour progression and relapse. While current mathematical models often consider discrete phenotypic structuring of the cell…
Understanding under what conditions interacting populations, whether they be plants, animals, or viral particles, coexist is a question of theoretical and practical importance in population biology. Both biotic interactions and…
Geographic ranges of communities of species evolve in response to environmental, ecological, and evolutionary forces. Understanding the effects of these forces on species' range dynamics is a major goal of spatial ecology. Previous…
Evolutionary dynamics can be studied in well-mixed or structured populations. Population structure typically arises from the heterogeneous distribution of individuals in physical space or on social networks. Here we introduce a new type of…
A natural phenomenon occurring in a living system is an outcome of the dynamics of the specific biological network underlying the phenomenon. The collective dynamics have both deterministic and stochastic components. The stochastic nature…
In apparent contradiction to competition theory, the number of known, co-existing plankton species far exceeds their explicable biodiversity - a discrepancy termed the Paradox of the Plankton. We introduce a new game-theoretic model for…
Hysteresis and bet-hedging (random choice of phenotypes) are two different observations typically linked with multiplicity of phenotypes in biological systems. Hysteresis can be viewed as form of the system's persistent memory of past…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…