Related papers: Specialization at an expanding front
We study a stochastic spatial model of biological competition in which two species have the same birth and death rates, but different diffusion constants. In the absence of this difference, the model can be considered as an off-lattice…
We study a class of evolution models, where the breeding process involves an arbitrary exchangeable process, allowing for mutations to appear. The population size $n$ is fixed, hence after breeding, selection is applied. Individuals are…
The relationships between diversity, productivity and scale determine much of the structure and robustness of complex biological and social systems. While arguments for the link between specialization and productivity are common, diversity…
Function diversity, the range of tasks individuals perform, and specialization, the distribution of function abundances, are fundamental to complex adaptive systems. In the absence of overarching principles, these properties have appeared…
We investigate the evolution of a population of non-interacting particles which undergo diffusion and multiplication. Diffusion is assumed to be homogeneous, while multiplication proceeds with different rates reflecting the distribution of…
We consider a model of aggregation, both diffusion-limited and ballistic, based on the Cayley tree. Growth is from the leaves of the tree towards the root, leading to non-trivial screening and branch competition effects. The model exhibits…
We investigate the competition between barrier slowing down and proliferation induced superdiffusion in a model of population dynamics in a random force field. Numerical results in $d=1$ suggest that a new intermediate diffusion behaviour…
Environmental heterogeneity can drive genetic heterogeneity in expanding populations; mutant strains may emerge that trade overall growth rate for an improved ability to survive in patches that are hostile to the wild type. This…
We introduce a model in which cells belonging to two species proliferate with volume exclusion on an expanding surface. If the surface expands uniformly, we show that the domains formed by the two species present a critical behavior. We…
Most conspicuous organisms are multicellular and most multicellular organisms develop somatic cells to perform specific, non-reproductive tasks. The ubiquity of this division of labor suggests that it is highly advantageous. In this paper,…
A classical view of speciation is that reproductive isolation arises as a by-product of genetic divergence. Here, individual-based simulations are used to evaluate whether the mechanisms implied by this view may result in rapid speciation…
When a population inhabits an inhomogeneous environment, the fitness value of traits can vary with the position in the environment. Gene flow caused by random mating can nevertheless prevent that a sexually reproducing population splits…
In ecology, species can mitigate their extinction risks in uncertain environments by diversifying individual phenotypes. This observation is quantified by the theory of bet-hedging, which provides a reason for the degree of phenotypic…
The dynamics of dispersal-structured populations, consisting of competing individuals that are characterized by different diffusion coefficients but are otherwise identical, is investigated. Competition is taken into account through…
How should dispersal strategies be chosen to increase the likelihood of survival of a species? We obtain the answer for the spatially extended versions of three well-known models of two competing species with unequal diffusivities. Though…
We investigate the spreading behavior of two invasive species modeled by a Lotka-Volterra diffusive competition system with two free boundaries in a spherically symmetric setting. We show that, for the weak-strong competition case, under…
Predicting evolution of expanding populations is critical to control biological threats such as invasive species and cancer metastasis. Expansion is primarily driven by reproduction and dispersal, but nature abounds with examples of…
A fissioning organism may purge unrepairable damage by bequeathing it preferentially to one of its daughters. Using the mathematical formalism of superprocesses, we propose a flexible class of analytically tractable models that allow quite…
Many theoretical and experimental studies suggest that range expansions can have severe consequences for the gene pool of the expanding population. Due to strongly enhanced genetic drift at the advancing frontier, neutral and weakly…
Environment plays a fundamental role in the competition for resources, and hence in the evolution of populations. Here, we study a well-mixed, finite population consisting of two strains competing for the limited resources provided by an…