Related papers: Tierra's missing neutrality: case solved
We find that the hypothesis made by Jan, Stauffer and Moseley [Theory in Biosc., 119, 166 (2000)] for the evolution of sex, namely a strategy devised to escape extinction due to too many deleterious mutations, is sufficient but not…
While Neutral Theory famously describes the number of discrete genetic differences in populations, we consider the number of genetic backgrounds under which such differences are observed - setting limits to the generalizability of their…
The mutation-selection mechanism of Darwinian evolution gives rise not only to adaptation to environmental conditions but also to the enhancement of robustness against mutations. When two or more phenotypes have the same fitness value, the…
We study the relative importance of "top-speed" (long-term growth rate) and "acceleration" (how quickly the long-term growth rate can be reached) in the evolutionary race to increase population size. We observe that fitness alone does not…
We determine stability and attractor properties of random Boolean genetic network models with canalyzing rules for a variety of architectures. For all power law, exponential, and flat in-degree distributions, we find that the networks are…
Convolutional Neural Networks have been shown to be vulnerable to adversarial examples, which are known to locate in subspaces close to where normal data lies but are not naturally occurring and of low probability. In this work, we…
When group members claim a portion of limited resources, it is tempting to invest more effort to get a larger share. However, if everyone acts similarly, they all get the same piece they would obtain without extra effort. This is the…
The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…
In economic systems, the mix of products that countries make or export has been shown to be a strong leading indicator of economic growth. Hence, methods to characterize and predict the structure of the network connecting countries to the…
Identifying undocumented or potential future interactions among species is a challenge facing modern ecologists. Recent link prediction methods rely on trait data, however large species interaction databases are typically sparse and…
The spread of infectious disease and the evolution of antigenically distinct strains are often modeled separately, despite strong feedbacks mediated by host immune memory and heterogeneous contacts. To tackle this challenging problem, we…
In the 1990s, Richard Lewontin referred to what appeared to be the twilight of determinism in biology. He pointed out that DNA determines only a little part of life phenomena, which are very complex. In fact, organisms determine the…
Ecosystems display a complex spatial organization. Ecologists have long tried to characterize them by looking at how different measures of biodiversity change across spatial scales. Ecological neutral theory has provided simple predictions…
Recent research has identified interactions between networks as crucial for the outcome of evolutionary games taking place on them. While the consensus is that interdependence does promote cooperation by means of organizational complexity…
Nearly neutral theory predicts that evolutionary processes will differ in small populations compared to large populations, a key point of concern for endangered species. The nearly-neutral threshold, the span of neutral variation, and the…
Modern biological tools have made it possible to unequivocally demonstrate the deep relationship among species in terms of genes and basic molecular mechanisms. In addition, results from genetic, physical and physiological approaches…
Understanding the architectural subtleties of ecological networks, believed to confer them enhanced stability and robustness, is a subject of outmost relevance. Mutualistic interactions have been profusely studied and their corresponding…
In genetics the Moran model describes the neutral evolution of a bi-allelic gene in a population of haploid individuals subjected to mutations. We show in this paper that this model can be mapped into an influence dynamical process on…
Understanding the relationship between complexity and stability in large dynamical systems -- such as ecosystems -- remains a key open question in complexity theory which has inspired a rich body of work developed over more than fifty…
Of all the issues discussed at {\em Alife VII: Looking Forward, Looking Backward}, the issue of whether it was possible to create an artificial life system that exhibits {\em open-ended evolution} of novelty is by far the biggest. Of the 14…