Related papers: On the possibility of engineering social evolution…
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…
Long-term evolutionary processes can strongly influence common-pool resource conservation by generating new traits or behaviours that modify the feedback between population strategies and the resource state. Here we develop an…
Through the lens of game theory, cooperation is frequently considered an unsustainable strategy: if an entire population is cooperating, each indi- vidual can increase its overall fitness by choosing not to cooperate, thereby still…
Theoretical models suggest that social networks influence the evolution of cooperation, but to date there have been few experimental studies. Observational data suggest that a wide variety of behaviors may spread in human social networks,…
Direct reciprocity is a powerful mechanism for evolution of cooperation based on repeated interactions between the same individuals. But high levels of cooperation evolve only if the benefit-to-cost ratio exceeds a certain threshold that…
Evolutionary games on graphs describe how strategic interactions and population structure determine evolutionary success, quantified by the probability that a single mutant takes over a population. Graph structures, compared to the…
Intraspecific trait variation has been increasingly recognized as an important factor in determining species interaction and diversity. Eco-evolutionary models have studied the distribution of trait values within a population that changes…
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. In stochastic descriptions of evolutionary dynamics, such as the Moran process, individuals are chosen randomly for birth and for death. If the same type is chosen for both steps,…
Evolutionary dynamics experienced by mixed microbial populations of cooperators and cheaters has been examined in experiments in the literature using a protocol of periodic dilution to investigate the properties of resilience and…
In many social mammals, early life social adversity and social integration largely predict individual health, lifespan and reproductive success. Efforts in identifying the physiological mechanisms mediating the relationship between the…
Evolutionary graph theory is a well established framework for modelling the evolution of social behaviours in structured populations. An emerging consensus in this field is that graphs that exhibit heterogeneity in the number of connections…
We study a general setting of neutral evolution in which the population is of finite, constant size and can have spatial structure. Mutation leads to different genetic types ("traits"), which can be discrete or continuous. Under minimal…
The metabolic activity of microbes has played an essential role in the evolution and persistence of life on Earth. Microbial metabolism plays a primary role in the flow of carbon, nitrogen and other elements through the biosphere on a…
When beneficial mutations are rare, they accumulate by a series of selective sweeps. But when they are common, many beneficial mutations will occur before any can fix, so there will be many different mutant lineages in the population…
Biological systems are modular, and this modularity evolves over time and in different environments. A number of observations have been made of increased modularity in biological systems under increased environmental pressure. We here…
Much research has focused on the deleterious effects of free-riding in public goods games, and a variety of mechanisms that suppresses cheating behaviour. Here we argue that under certain conditions cheating behaviour can be beneficial to…
In this paper we address the cooperation problem in structured populations by considering the prisoner's dilemma game as metaphor of the social interactions between individuals with imitation capacity. We present a new strategy update rule…
Cooperators forgo their interest to benefit others. Thus cooperation should not be favored by natural selection. It challenges the evolutionists, since cooperation is widespread. As one of the resolutions, information spreading has been…
Cooperation is a key driver of human social progress. Studies of the evolution of cooperation typically assume a deterministic outcome for social interactions. But in real-world social interactions, interaction outcomes are often subject to…
Interactions among individuals in natural populations often occur in a dynamically changing environment. Understanding the role of environmental variation in population dynamics has long been a central topic in theoretical ecology and…