Related papers: Evolutionary paths under catastrophes

Epidemic outbreaks of new pathogens, or known pathogens in new populations, cause a great deal of fear because they are hard to predict. For theoretical models of disease spreading, on the other hand, quantities characterizing the outbreak…

Stronger selection implies faster evolution---that is, the greater the force, the faster the change. This apparently self-evident proposition, however, is derived under the assumption that genetic variation within a population is primarily…

Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. The structure of a biological population affects which traits evolve. Understanding evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations is difficult. Precise results have been…

With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…

Organisms result from adaptive processes interacting across different time scales. One such interaction is that between development and evolution. Models have shown that development sweeps over several traits in a single agent, sometimes…

Because mutations are mostly deleterious, mutation rates should be reduced by natural selection. However, mutations also provide the raw material for adaptation. Therefore, evolutionary theory suggests that the mutation rate must balance…

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…

Continuously changing environments have a paramount role in the evolution of cooperative behavior. Previous works have shown that the transitions among different games, as the feedback between behaviors and environments, can promote…

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.…

We consider evolution of a large population, where fitness of each organism is defined by many phenotypical traits. These traits result from expression of many genes. We propose a new model of gene regulation, where gene expression is…

We analyze mathematical models of the global human population growth and compare them to actual dynamics of the world population and of the world surplus product. We consider a possibility that the so-called world's demographic transition…

Stochastic phenotype switching has been suggested to play a beneficial role in microbial populations by leading to the division of labour among cells, or ensuring that at least some of the population survives an unexpected change in…

Biological evolution can be conceptualized as a search process in the space of gene sequences guided by the fitness landscape, a mapping that assigns a measure of reproductive value to each genotype. Here we discuss probabilistic models of…

Demographic data and recent experiments verify earlier predictions that mortality has short (few percent of the life span) memory of the previous life history, may be significantly decreased, reset to its value at a much younger age, and…

Our theoretical understanding of crossover is limited by our ability to analyze how population diversity evolves. In this study, we provide one of the first rigorous analyses of population diversity and optimization time in a setting where…

Theory predicts rapid genetic drift during invasions, yet many expanding populations maintain high genetic diversity. We find that genetic drift is dramatically suppressed when dispersal rates increase with the population density because…

We introduce and analyse an individual-based evolutionary model, in which a population of genetically diverse organisms compete with each other for limited resources. Through theoretical analysis and stochastic simulations, we show that the…

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…

We examine birth--death processes with state dependent transition probabilities and at least one absorbing boundary. In evolution, this describes selection acting on two different types in a finite population where reproductive events occur…

Many life-history traits, like the age at maturity or adult longevity, are important determinants of the generation time. For instance, semelparous species whose adults reproduce once and die have shorter generation times than iteroparous…