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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…
Both evolution and ecology have long been concerned with the impact of variable environmental conditions on observed levels of genetic diversity within and between species. We model the evolution of a quantitative trait under selection that…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
A spacially extended model of the collective behavior of a large number of locally acting organisms is proposed in which organisms move probabilistically between local cells in space, but with weights dependent on local morphogenetic…
Many living and non-living complex systems can be modeled and understood as collective systems made of heterogeneous components that self-organize and generate nontrivial morphological structures and behaviors. This chapter presents a brief…
Understanding under what conditions interacting populations, whether they be plants, animals, or viral particles, coexist is a question of theoretical and practical importance in population biology. Both biotic interactions and…
Microbial populations in the natural environment are likely to experience growth conditions very different from those of a typical laboratory xperiment. In particular, removal rates of biomass and substrate are unlikely to be balanced under…
Many mathematical models of evolution assume that all individuals experience the same environment. Here, we study the Moran process in heterogeneous environments. The population is of finite size with two competing types, which are exposed…
We show how highly-diverse ecological communities may display persistent abundance fluctuations, when interacting through resource competition and subjected to migration from a species pool. This turns out to be closely related to the ratio…
Mixed dispersal syndromes have historically been regarded as bet-hedging mechanisms that enhance survival in unpredictable environments, ensuring that some propagules stay in the maternal environment while others can potentially colonize…
Commonly recognized evolutionarily relevant effects of sexual reproduction include increased diversity, accelerated adaptation, and constrained accumulation of deleterious mutations, along with a secondary effect of species genotype…
Microbial communities display extreme diversity. A variety of strains or species coexist even when limited by a single resource. It has been argued that metabolite secretion creates new niches and facilitates such diversity. Nonetheless, it…
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.…
Mixed microbial communities, usually composed of various bacterial and fungal species, are fundamental in a plethora of environments, from soil to human gut and skin. Their evolution is a paradigmatic example of intertwined dynamics, where…
Ecological communities with many species can be classified into dynamical phases. In systems with all-to-all interactions, a phase where a fixed point is always reached and a dynamically-fluctuating phase have been found. The dynamics when…
Mutualistic interactions, which are beneficial for both interacting species, are recurrently present in ecosystems. Observations of natural systems showed that, if we draw mutualistic relationships as binary links between species, the…
The persistence of biodiversity of species is a challenging proposition in ecological communities in the face of Darwinian selection. The present article investigates beyond the pairwise competitive interactions and provides a novel…
The dynamics of two competing species in a finite size community is one of the most studied problems in population genetics and community ecology. Stochastic fluctuations lead, inevitably, to the extinction of one of the species, but the…
In biology and ecology, individuals or communities of individuals living in unpredictable environments often alternate between different evolutionary strategies to spread and reduce risks. Such behavior is commonly referred to as…
Multipartite viruses replicate through a puzzling evolutionary strategy. Their genome is segmented into two or more parts, and encapsidated in separate particles that appear to propagate independently. Completing the replication cycle,…