Related papers: Evolutionary paths under catastrophes
A number of authors have in recent years proposed that the processes of macroevolution may give rise to self-organized critical phenomena which could have a significant effect on the dynamics of ecosystems. In particular it has been…
Analysis of demographic catastrophes shows that, with the exception of perhaps only two critical events, they were too weak to influence the growth of human population. These results reinforce the conclusion that the concept of the Epoch of…
Complex evolving systems such as the biosphere, ecosystems and societies exhibit sudden collapses, for reasons that are only partially understood. Here we study this phenomenon using a mathematical model of a system that evolves under…
We present a stochastic model for the size of a taxon in paleobiology, in which we allow for the evolution of new taxon members, and both individual and catastrophic extinction events. The model uses ideas from the theory of birth and death…
Understanding if and how mutants reach fixation in populations is an important question in evolutionary biology. We study the impact of population growth has on the success of mutants. To systematically understand the effects of growth we…
A central problem in population ecology is understanding the consequences of stochastic fluctuations. Analytically tractable models with Gaussian driving noise have led to important, general insights, but they fail to capture rare,…
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…
The possibility of complicated dynamic behaviour driven by non-linear feedbacks in dynamical systems has revolutionized science in the latter part of the last century. Yet despite examples of complicated frequency dynamics, the possibility…
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…
We demonstrate with a thought experiment that fitness-based population dynamical approaches to evolution are not able to make quantitative, falsifiable predictions about the long-term behavior of evolutionary systems. A key characteristic…
On rugged fitness landscapes where sign epistasis is common, adaptation can often involve either individually beneficial "uphill" mutations or more complex mutational trajectories involving fitness valleys or plateaus. The dynamics of the…
We consider a stochastic model of population dynamics where each individual is characterised by a trait in {0,1,...,L} and has a natural reproduction rate, a logistic death rate due to age or competition and a probability of mutation…
The dynamics of adaptation is difficult to predict because it is highly stochastic even in large populations. The uncertainty emerges from number fluctuations, called genetic drift, arising in the small number of particularly fit…
We analytically study the dynamics of evolving populations that exhibit metastability on the level of phenotype or fitness. In constant selective environments, such metastable behavior is caused by two qualitatively different mechanisms.…
We review models of biological evolution in which the population frequency changes deterministically with time. If the population is self-replicating, although the equations for simple prototypes can be linearised, nonlinear equations arise…
Understanding the influence of an environment on the evolution of its resident population is a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Great progress has been made in homogeneous population structures while heterogeneous structures have…
We consider the dynamics of a three-species system incorporating the Allee Effect, focussing on its influence on the emergence of extreme events in the system. First we find that under Allee effect the regular periodic dynamics changes to…
In biology and ecology, individuals or communities of individuals living in unpredictable environments often alternate between different evolutionary strategies to spread and reduce risks. Such behavior is commonly referred to as…
Evolutionary game theory has traditionally employed deterministic models to describe population dynamics. These models, due to their inherent nonlinearities, can exhibit deterministic chaos, where population fluctuations follow complex,…
We consider an asexual population under strong selection-weak mutation conditions evolving on rugged fitness landscapes with many local fitness peaks. Unlike the previous studies in which the initial fitness of the population is assumed to…