Related papers: Enzyme regulation and mutation in a model serial d…
Eukaryote genomes contain excessively introns, inter-genic and other non-genic sequences that appear to have no vital functional role or phenotype manifestation. Their existence, a long-standing puzzle, is viewed from the principle of…
The ubiquity of modules in biological networks may result from an evolutionary benefit of a modular organization. For instance, modularity may increase the rate of adaptive evolution, because modules can be easily combined into new…
In a wide variety of natural systems, closely-related microbial strains coexist stably, resulting in high levels of fine-scale biodiversity. However, the mechanisms that stabilize this coexistence are not fully understood. Spatial…
Extensive research shows that more species-rich assemblages are generally more productive and efficient in resource use than comparable assemblages with fewer species. But the question of how diversity simultaneously affects the wide…
The evolution of structure in biology is driven by accretion and change. Accretion brings together disparate parts to form bigger wholes. Change provides opportunities for growth and innovation. Here we review patterns and processes that…
Character evolution that affects ecological community interactions often occurs contemporaneously with temporal changes in population size, potentially altering the very nature of those dynamics. Such eco-evolutionary processes may be most…
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.…
Cooperative behavior, the costly provision of benefits to others, is common across all domains of life. This review article discusses cooperative behavior in the microbial world, mediated by the exchange of extracellular products called…
A major aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the respective roles of adaptive versus non-adaptive changes in the evolution of complexity. While selection is certainly responsible for the spread and maintenance of complex phenotypes,…
In a complex system, the individual components are neither so tightly coupled or correlated that they can all be treated as a single unit, nor so uncorrelated that they can be approximated as independent entities. Instead, patterns of…
The emergence of collective cooperation in competitive environments is a well-known phenomenon in biology, economics, and social systems. While most evolutionary game models focus on the evolution of strategies for a fixed game, how…
Intraspecific trait variation has been increasingly recognized as an important factor in determining species interaction and diversity. Eco-evolutionary models have studied the distribution of trait values within a population that changes…
Eco-evolutionary dynamics is crucial to understand how individuals' behaviors and the surrounding environment interplay with each other. Typically, it is assumed that individuals update their behaviors via linear imitation function, i.e.,…
A packed community of exponentially proliferating microbes will spread in size exponentially. However, due to nutrient depletion, mechanical constraints, or other limitations, exponential proliferation is not indefinite, and the spreading…
Dispersal of species is a fundamental ecological process in the evolution and maintenance of biodiversity. Limited control over ecological parameters has hindered progress in understanding of what enables species to colonise new area, as…
Eco-evolutionary frameworks can explain certain features of communities in which ecological and evolutionary processes occur over comparable timescales. Here, we investigate whether an evolutionary dynamics may interact with the spatial…
A great variety of molecular components is encapsulated in cells. Each of these components is replicated for cell reproduction. To address an essential role of the huge diversity of cellular components, we study a model of protocells that…
Environmental variability greatly influences the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a population, i.e. it affects how its size and composition evolve. Here, we study a well-mixed population of finite and fluctuating size whose growth is limited…
Phenotypic variation is a hallmark of cellular physiology. Metabolic heterogeneity, in particular, underpins single-cell phenomena such as microbial drug tolerance and growth variability. Much research has focussed on transcriptomic and…
The relationship between the dynamics of a community and its constituent pairwise interactions is a fundamental problem in ecology. Higher-order ecological effects beyond pairwise interactions may be key to complex ecosystems, but…