Related papers: Tierra's missing neutrality: case solved
In evolutionary game theory, an important measure of a mutant trait (strategy) is its ability to invade and take over an otherwise-monomorphic population. Typically, one quantifies the success of a mutant strategy via the probability that a…
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…
The theory of island biogeography[1] asserts that an island or a local community approaches an equilibrium species richness as a result of the interplay between the immigration of species from the much larger metacommunity source area and…
The functioning of a living cell is largely determined by the structure of its regulatory network, comprising non-linear interactions between regulatory genes. An important factor for the stability and evolvability of such regulatory…
Traditionally evolution is seen as a process where from a pool of possible variations of a population (e.g. biological species or industrial goods) a few variations get selected which survive and proliferate, whereas the others vanish.…
We study in detail a recently proposed simple discrete model for evolution on smooth landscapes. An asymptotic solution of this model for long times is constructed. We find that the dynamics of the population are governed by correlation…
The rich and varied ways that genetic material can be passed between species has motivated extensive research into the theory of phylogenetic networks. Features that align with biological processes, or with desirable mathematical…
A quasispecies is a set of interrelated genotypes that have reached a situation of equilibrium while evolving according to the usual Darwinian principles of selection and mutation. Quasispecies studies invariably assume that it is possible…
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…
Models of strategy evolution on static networks help us understand how population structure can promote the spread of traits like cooperation. One key mechanism is the formation of altruistic spatial clusters, where neighbors of a…
Natural selection and random drift are competing phenomena for explaining the evolution of populations. Combining a highly fit mutant with a population structure that improves the odds that the mutant spreads through the whole population…
We suggest to simulate evolution of complex organisms constrained by the sole requirement of robustness in their expression patterns. This scenario is illustrated by evolving discrete logical networks with epigenetic properties. Evidence…
The theory of interaction-based evolution argues that, at the most basic level of analysis, there is a third alternative for how adaptive evolution works besides a) accidental mutation and natural selection and b) Lamarckism, namely, c)…
Cooperation is ubiquitous across all levels of biological systems ranging from microbial communities to human societies. It, however, seemingly contradicts the evolutionary theory, since cooperators are exploited by free-riders and thus are…
Reaction-diffusion systems may lead to the formation of steady state heterogeneous spatial patterns, known as Turing patterns. Their mathematical formulation is important for the study of pattern formation in general and play central roles…
Recently it has been shown that a large variety of different networks have power-law (scale-free) distributions of connectivities. We investigate the robustness of such a distribution in discrete threshold networks under neutral evolution.…
Intransitivity is supposed to be a main reason for deficits in coevolutionary progress and inheritable superiority. Besides, coevolutionary dynamics is characterized by interactions yielding subjective fitness, but aiming at solutions that…
The number of fixed mutations accumulated in an evolving population often displays a variance that is significantly larger than the mean (the overdispersed molecular clock). By examining a generic evolutionary process on a neutral network…
Rooted phylogenetic networks provide a way to describe species' relationships when evolution departs from the simple model of a tree. However, networks inferred from genomic data can be highly tangled, making it difficult to discern the…
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…