Related papers: Improve it or lose it: evolvability costs of compe…

The diversity and quality of natural systems have been a puzzle and inspiration for communities studying artificial life. It is now widely admitted that the adaptation mechanisms enabling these properties are largely influenced by the…

One of the classical questions in evolutionary biology is how evolutionary processes are coupled at the gene and species level. With this motivation, we compare the topological properties (mainly the depth scaling, as a characterization of…

Enzymes are on the front lines of evolution. All living organisms rely on highly efficient, specific enzymes for growth, sustenance, and reproduction; and many diseases are a consequence of a mutation on an enzyme that affects its catalytic…

We integrate dual-process theories of human cognition with evolutionary game theory to study the evolution of automatic and controlled decision-making processes. We introduce a model where agents who make decisions using either automatic or…

The reward system is one of the fundamental drivers of animal behaviors and is critical for survival and reproduction. Despite its importance, the problem of how the reward system has evolved is underexplored. In this paper, we try to…

We show how the characteristics of the evolutionary algorithm influence the evolvability of candidate solutions, i.e. the propensity of evolving individuals to generate better solutions as a result of genetic variation. More specifically,…

Biases in molecular evolution can significantly influence evolutionary trajectories. They have been described in a variety of contexts such as development and mutation, but not for acquiring new functions (i.e. emergence). Here, we…

Aging is a fundamental aspect of living systems that undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. Living systems, known as complex systems, require complexity…

The environment has a strong influence on a population's evolutionary dynamics. Driven by both intrinsic and external factors, the environment is subject to continual change in nature. To capture an ever-changing environment, we consider a…

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…

The nature and source of evolutionary trends in complexity is difficult to assess from the fossil record, and the driven vs. passive nature of such trends has been debated for decades. There are also questions about how effectively…

Any organism is embedded in an environment that changes over time. The timescale for and statistics of environmental change, the precision with which the organism can detect its environment, and the costs and benefits of particular protein…

This paper focuses on the maximum speed at which biological evolution can occur. I derive inequalities that limit the rate of evolutionary processes driven by natural selection, mutations, or genetic drift. These \emph{rate limits} link the…

Social dilemmas are an integral part of social interactions. Cooperative actions, ranging from secreting extra-cellular products in microbial populations to donating blood in humans, are costly to the actor and hence create an incentive to…

We study an individual-based model in which two spatially-distributed species, characterized by different diffusivities, compete for resources. We consider three different ecological settings. In the first, diffusing faster has a cost in…

The mutual relationship between evolution and learning is a controversial argument among the artificial intelligence and neuro-evolution communities. After more than three decades, there is still no common agreement on the matter. In this…

Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. Reproduction depends on the payoff a strategy receives. The payoff depends on the environment that may change over time, on intrinsic uncertainties, and on other sources of…

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…

Phylogenetic analyses of gene expression have great potential for addressing a wide range of questions. These analyses will, for example, identify genes that have evolutionary shifts in expression that are correlated with evolutionary…

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…