Related papers: Boom-bust population dynamics can increase diversi…
The far-reaching consequences of ecological interactions in the dynamics of biological communities remain an intriguing subject. For decades, competition has been a cornerstone in ecological processes, but mounting evidence shows that…
Environment plays a fundamental role in the competition for resources, and hence in the evolution of populations. Here, we study a well-mixed, finite population consisting of two strains competing for the limited resources provided by an…
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…
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…
Ecosystems frequently display the coexistence of diverse species under resource competition, typically resulting in skewed distributions of rarity and abundance. A potential driver of such coexistence is environmental fluctuations that…
Frequency-dependent selection reflects the interaction between different species as they battle for limited resources in their environment. In a stochastic evolutionary game the species relative fitnesses guides the evolutionary dynamics…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
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?…
The biological requirements for an ecosystem to develop and maintain species diversity are in general unknown. Here we consider a model ecosystem of sessile and mutually excluding organisms competing for space [Mathiesen et al. Phys. Rev.…
When a collection of phenotypically diverse organisms compete with each other for limited resources, with competition being strongest amongst the most similar, the population can evolve into tightly localised clusters. This process can be…
We study the interplay of population growth and evolutionary dynamics using a stochastic model based on birth and death events. In contrast to the common assumption of an independent population size, evolution can be strongly affected by…
Biodiversity and extinction are central issues in evolution. Dynamical balance among different species in ecosystems is often described by deterministic replicator equations with moderate success. However, fluctuations are inevitable,…
We study a dynamic model of ecosystems where immigration plays an essential role both in assembling the species community and in mantaining its biodiversity. This framework is particularly relevant for insular ecosystems. Population…
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…
Stochastic models of diffusion with excluded-volume effects are used to model many biological and physical systems at a discrete level. The average properties of the population may be described by a continuum model based on partial…
Finite-size fluctuations arising in the dynamics of competing populations may have dramatic influence on their fate. As an example, in this article, we investigate a model of three species which dominate each other in a cyclic manner.…
The dynamics of two competing species in a finite size community is one of the most studied problems in population genetics and community ecology. Stochastic fluctuations lead, inevitably, to the extinction of one of the species, but the…
Biological evolution is realised through the same mechanisms of birth and death that underlie change in population density. The deep interdependence between ecology and evolution is well-established, and recent models focus on integrating…
Natural ecosystems, in particular on the microbial scale, are inhabited by a large number of species. The population size of each species is affected by interactions of individuals with each other and by spatial and temporal changes in…
We present an explicit unified stochastic model of fluctuations in population size due to random birth, death, density-dependent competition and environmental fluctuations. Stochastic dynamics provide insight into small populations,…