Related papers: Neutral Diversity in Experimental Metapopulations
This paper proposes a stochastic block model with dynamics where the population grows using preferential attachment. Nodes with higher weighted degree are more likely to recruit new nodes, and nodes always recruit nodes from their own…
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…
In large populations, multiple beneficial mutations may be simultaneously spreading. In asexual populations, these mutations must either arise on the same background or compete against each other. In sexual populations, recombination can…
Laboratory experiments with bacterial colonies, under well-controlled conditions often lead to evolutionary diversification, where at least two ecotypes emerge from an initially monomorphic population. Empirical evidence suggests that such…
To explore the coupling between a growing population of microorganisms such as E. coli and a nonuniform nutrient distribution, we formulate a minimalistic model. It consists of active Brownian particles that divide and grow at a…
We revisit the classical population genetics model of a population evolving under multiplicative selection, mutation and drift. The number of beneficial alleles in a multi-locus system can be considered a trait under exponential selection.…
Populations of heterogeneous cells play an important role in many biological systems. In this paper we consider systems where each cell can be modelled by an ordinary differential equation. To account for heterogeneity, parameter values are…
Motivated by a model of an area-wide integrated pest management, we develop an interacting particle system evolving in a random environment. It is a generalised contact process in which the birth rate takes two possible values, determined…
Unlike coffee and cream that homogenize when stirred, growing micro-organisms (e.g., bacteria, baker's yeast) can actively kill each other and avoid mixing. How do such antagonistic interactions impact the growth and survival of competing…
In the growth of bacterial colonies, a great variety of complex patterns are observed in experiments, depending on external conditions and the bacterial species. Typically, existing models employ systems of reaction-diffusion equations or…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. It is well known that population structure can affect evolutionary dynamics. Traditionally, natural selection is studied between mutants that differ in reproductive rate, but are…
Natural selection and random drift are competing phenomena for explaining the evolution of populations. Combining a highly fit mutant with a population structure that improves the odds that the mutant spreads through the whole population…
Microbial communities are ubiquitous in nature and come in a multitude of forms, ranging from communities dominated by a handful of species to communities containing a wide variety of metabolically distinct organisms. This huge range in…
We consider a dynamic metapopulation involving one large population of size N surrounded by colonies of size \varepsilon_NN, usually called peripheral isolates in ecology, where N\to\infty and \varepsilon_N\to 0 in such a way that…
Many species of microbes cooperate by producing public goods from which they collectively benefit. However, these populations are under the risk of being taken over by cheating mutants that do not contribute to the pool of public goods.…
We review and extend results for mutation, selection, genetic drift, and migration in a one-dimensional continuous population. The population is described by a continuous limit of the stepping stone model, which leads to the stochastic…
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…
In multicellular organisms, several cell states coexist. For determining each cell type, cell-cell interactions are often essential, in addition to intracellular gene expression dynamics. Based on dynamical systems theory, we propose a…
Despite major environmental and genetic differences, microbial metabolic networks are known to generate consistent physiological outcomes across vastly different organisms. This remarkable robustness suggests that, at least in bacteria,…
How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…