Related papers: Co-evolution of replicators and their parasites

In this work we develop a discrete model of competing species affected by a common parasite. We analyze the influence of the fast development of the shared disease on the community dynamics. The model is presented under the form of a two…

Simulation of population dynamics is a central research theme in computational biology, which contributes to understanding the interactions between predators and preys. Conventional mathematical tools of this theme, however, are incapable…

In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of…

The study of the evolution of cooperative behaviours --which provide benefits to others-- and altruism --which provides benefits to others at a cost to oneself-- has been on the core of the evolutionary game theoretical framework since its…

Food webs represent the set of consumer-resource interactions among a set of species that co-occur in a habitat, but most food web studies have omitted parasites and their interactions. Recent studies have provided conflicting evidence on…

The evolutionary persistence of symbiotic associations is a puzzle. Adaptation should eliminate cooperative traits if it is possible to enjoy the advantages of cooperation without reciprocating - a facet of cooperation known in game theory…

We study the effect of speciation, i.e. the introduction of new species through evolution into communities, in the setting of predator-prey systems. Predator-prey dynamics is classically well modeled by Lotka-Volterra equations, also when…

Drawing on the understanding of the logistic map, we propose a simple predator-prey model where predators and prey adapt to each other, leading to the co-evolution of the system. The special dynamics observed in periodic windows contribute…

Under the conditions prevalent in the late Pleistocene (small hunter-gatherer groups and frequent inter-group conflicts), coevolution of gene-related behavior and culturally transmitted group-level institutions provides a plausible…

Cooperation is beneficial for the species as a whole, but, at the level of an individual, defection pays off. Natural selection is then expected to favor defectors and eliminate cooperation. This prediction is in stark contrast with the…

We explore the emergence of cooperation in the framework of evolutionary game theory. First we introduce the cooperation problem in a novel way that we believe it have important consequences in how problem is addressed. Then we present a…

Enzymes are on the front lines of evolution. All living organisms rely on highly efficient, specific enzymes for growth, sustenance, and reproduction; and many diseases are a consequence of a mutation on an enzyme that affects its catalytic…

How multicellular life forms evolved out from unicellular ones constitutes a major problem in our understanding of the evolution of our biosphere. A recent set of experiments involving yeast cell populations has shown that selection for…

We explore the commonalities between methods for assuring the security of computer systems (cybersecurity) and the mechanisms that have evolved through natural selection to protect vertebrates against pathogens, and how insights derived…

Explaining the origin of life requires us to explain how self-replication arises. To be specific, how can a self-replicating entity develop spontaneously from a chemical reaction system in which no reaction is self-replicating? Previously…

Simulations of the coevolution of many interacting species are performed using the Webworld model. The model has a realistic set of predator-prey equations that describe the population dynamics of the species for any structure of the food…

In the prospect of ecology and biology, studying insect-plant predation will considerably contribute to pest control, benefit agriculture and afforestation, and also help people to better understand insect-plant co-evolution. Therefore, we…

We introduce and analyze a within-host dynamical model of the coevolution between rapidly mutating pathogens and the adaptive immune response. Pathogen mutation and a homeostatic constraint on lymphocytes both play a role in allowing the…

Extortion strategies can dominate any opponent in an iterated prisoner's dilemma game. But if players are able to adopt the strategies performing better, extortion becomes widespread and evolutionary unstable. It may sometimes act as a…

This study here suggests a classification of technologies based on taxonomic characteristics of interaction between technologies in complex systems that is not a studied research field in economics of technical change. The proposed taxonomy…