Related papers: An Experimental-Design Perspective on Population G…
We develop a general framework for proving rigorous guarantees on the performance of the EM algorithm and a variant known as gradient EM. Our analysis is divided into two parts: a treatment of these algorithms at the population level (in…
We propose a class of evolutionary models that involves an arbitrary exchangeable process as the breeding process and different selection schemes. In those models, a new genome is born according to the breeding process, and then a genome is…
Evolvability is defined as the ability of a population to generate heritable variation to facilitate its adaptation to new environments or selection pressures. In this article, we consider evolvability as a phenotypic trait subject to…
The search ability of an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) depends on the variation among the individuals in the population. Maintaining an optimal level of diversity in the EA population is imperative to ensure that progress of the EA search is…
We are interested in modeling Darwinian evolution resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. The population is modeled as a stochastic point process whose generator captures…
BACKGROUND: An important question is whether evolution favors properties such as mutational robustness or evolvability that do not directly benefit any individual, but can influence the course of future evolution. Functionally similar…
We are interested in modelling Darwinian evolution, resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. Our models are rooted in the microscopic, stochastic description of a population…
A key question in evolution is how likely a mutant is to take over. This depends on natural selection and on stochastic fluctuations. Population spatial structure can impact mutant fixation probabilities. We introduce a model for structured…
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…
In this paper we study collective decision making on a multi-population, represented by a regular network of groups of individuals. Each group consists of a collection of players and every player can choose between two options. A group is…
The role of positive selection in human evolution remains controversial. On the one hand, scans for positive selection have identified hundreds of candidate loci and the genome-wide patterns of polymorphism show signatures consistent with…
Non-selective effects, like genetic drift, are an important factor in modern conceptions of evolution, and have been extensively studied for constant population sizes. Here, we consider non-selective evolution in the case of growing…
Evolution in finite populations is often modelled using the classical Moran process. Over the last ten years this methodology has been extended to structured populations using evolutionary graph theory. An important question in any such…
In nature, most microbial populations have complex spatial structures that can affect their evolution. Evolutionary graph theory predicts that some spatial structures modelled by placing individuals on the nodes of a graph affect the…
Genetic regulation is a key component in development, but a clear understanding of the structure and dynamics of genetic networks is not yet at hand. In this paper we investigate these properties within an artificial genome model originally…
The evolutionary process that led to the emergence of modern human behaviors during the Middle Stone Age in Africa remains enigmatic. While various hypotheses have been proposed, we offer a new perspective that integrates the variability…
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…
The observation that phenotypic variability is ubiquitous in isogenic populations has led to a multitude of experimental and theoretical studies seeking to probe the causes and consequences of this variability. Whether it be in the context…
When biological populations expand into new territory, the evolutionary outcomes can be strongly influenced by genetic drift, the random fluctuations in allele frequencies. Meanwhile, spatial variability in the environment can also…
In the past ten years this author published some 15 highly mathematical papers about his new Evo-SETI (Evolution and SETI) Theory. He proved that key features of Evo-SETI are: 1) The Statistical Drake Equation is the extension of the…