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Species introductions to new habitats can cause a decline in the population size of competing native species and consequently also in their genetic diversity. We are interested in why these adverse effects are weak in some cases whereas in…
According to the competitive exclusion principle, in a finite ecosystem, extinction occurs naturally when two or more species compete for the same resources. An important question that arises is: when coexistence is not possible, which…
Biological evolution can be conceptualized as a search process in the space of gene sequences guided by the fitness landscape, a mapping that assigns a measure of reproductive value to each genotype. Here we discuss probabilistic models of…
We are living in an uncertain and dynamically changing world, where optimal decision-making under uncertainty is directly linked to the survival of species. However, evolutionary selection pressures that shape value-based decision-making…
When three species compete cyclically in a well-mixed, stochastic system of $N$ individuals, extinction is known to typically occur at times scaling as the system size $N$. This happens, for example, in rock-paper-scissors games or…
This paper investigates the competition of two species in a heterogeneous environment subject to the effect of harvesting. The most realistic harvesting case is connected with the intrinsic growth rate, and the harvesting functions are…
We develop a stochastic, individual-based model for food web simulation which in the large-population limit reduces to the well-studied Webworld model, which has been used to successfully construct model food webs with several realistic…
Natural selection favors the more successful individuals. This is the elementary premise that pervades common models of evolution. Under extreme conditions, however, the process may no longer be probabilistic. Those that meet certain…
Apparent competition is an indirect interaction between species that share natural resources without any mutual aggression but negatively affect each other if there is a common enemy. The negative results of the apparent competition are…
Ecosystems dynamics is often considered as driven by a coupling of species' resource consumption and its population size dynamics. Such resource-population dynamics is captured by MacArthur-type models. One biologically relevant feature…
Modern ecology has re-emphasized the need for a quantitative understanding of the original 'survival of the fittest theme' based on analyzis of the intricate trade-offs between competing evolutionary strategies that characterize the…
We propose two models of the evolution of a pair of competing populations. Both are lattice based. The first is a compromise between fully spatial models, which do not appear amenable to analytic results, and interacting particle system…
Life systems are complex and hierarchical, with diverse components at different scales, yet they sustain themselves, grow, and evolve over time. How can a theory of such complex biological states be developed? Here we note that for a…
We are interested in modeling some two-level population dynamics, resulting from the interplay of ecological interactions and phenotypic variation of individuals (or hosts) and the evolution of cells (or parasites) of two types living in…
Games with environmental feedback have become a crucial area of study across various scientific domains, modelling the dynamic interplay between human decisions and environmental changes, and highlighting the consequences of our choices on…
The purpose of this Note is twofold: First, we introduce the general formalism of evolutionary genetics dynamics involving fitnesses, under both the deterministic and stochastic setups, and chiefly in discrete-time. In the process, we…
Macroevolution is considered as a problem of stochastic dynamics in a system with many competing agents. Evolutionary events (speciations and extinctions) are triggered by fitness records found by random exploration of the agents' fitness…
We study an individual-based model in which two spatially-distributed species, characterized by different diffusivities, compete for resources. We consider three different ecological settings. In the first, diffusing faster has a cost in…
A microscopic model is developed, within the frame of the theory of quantitative traits, to study both numerically and analytically the combined effect of competition and assortativity on the sympatric speciation process, i.e. speciation in…
Ecological selection is a major driver of community assembly. Selection is classified as stabilizing when species with intermediate trait values gain the highest reproductive success, whereas selection is considered directional when fitness…