Related papers: Local adaptation, phenotypic plasticity, and speci…
In apparent contradiction to competition theory, the number of known, co-existing plankton species far exceeds their explicable biodiversity - a discrepancy termed the Paradox of the Plankton. We introduce a new game-theoretic model for…
We study the evolution of recombination using a microscopic model developed within the frame of the theory of quantitative traits. Two components of fitness are considered: a static one that describes adaptation to environmental factors not…
Anthropogenic activity threatens biodiversity through climate change, habitat fragmentation, and increasing frequency and scale of disturbance. Various theoretical studies have sought to shed light on how these factors could promote or…
Artificial ecosystems provide an additional experimental tool to support laboratory work, field work, and theoretical development in competitive exclusion research. A novel application of a spatiotemporal agent based model is presented…
Non-uniform rates of morphological evolution and evolutionary increases in organismal complexity, captured in metaphors like "adaptive zones", "punctuated equilibrium" and "blunderbuss patterns", require more elaborate explanations than a…
Spatial metapopulation models are fundamental to theoretical ecology, enabling to study how landscape structure influences global species dynamics. Traditional models, including recent generalizations, often rely on the deterministic limit…
Biological organisms exhibit diverse strategies for adapting to varying environments. For example, a population of organisms may express the same phenotype in all environments (`unvarying strategy'), or follow environmental cues and express…
A complex interplay between species governs the evolution of spatial patterns in ecology. An open problem in the biological sciences is characterising spatio-temporal data and understanding how changes at the local scale affect global…
Evolutionary dynamics can be studied in well-mixed or structured populations. Population structure typically arises from the heterogeneous distribution of individuals in physical space or on social networks. Here we introduce a new type of…
Explaining how competing species coexist remains a central question in ecology. The well-known competitive exclusion principle (CEP) states that two species competing for the same resource cannot stably coexist, and more generally, that the…
Many organisms live in populations structured by space and by class, exhibit plastic responses to their social partners, and are subject to non-additive ecological and fitness effects. Social evolution theory has long recognized that all of…
In large clonal populations, several clones generally compete which results in complex evolutionary and ecological dynamics: experiments show successive selective sweeps of favorable mutations as well as long-term coexistence of multiple…
Structure, composition and stability of ecological populations are shaped by the inter- and intra-species interactions within these communities. It remains to be fully understood how the interplay of these interactions with other factors,…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…
Most theories of evolutionary diversification are based on equilibrium assumptions: they are either based on optimality arguments involving static fitness landscapes, or they assume that populations first evolve to an equilibrium state…
We consider a population living in a patchy environment that varies stochastically in space and time. The population is composed of two morphs (that is, individuals of the same species with different genotypes). In terms of survival and…
Cells generally change their internal state to adapt to an environmental change, and accordingly evolve in response to the new conditions. This process involves phenotypic changes that occur over several different time scales, ranging from…
The evolutionary and ecological processes behind the origin of species are among the most fundamental problems in biology. In fact, many theoretical hypothesis on different type of speciation have been proposed. In particular, models of…
The ability of responding to environmental stimuli with appropriate actions is a property shared by all living organisms, and it is also sought in the design of robotic systems. Phenotypic plasticity provides a way for achieving this…
Does an ecological community allow stable coexistence? Identifying the general principles that determine the answer to this question is a central problem of theoretical ecology. Random matrix theory approaches have uncovered the general…