Related papers: A Problem in Paleobiology
We analyze the long-term stability of a stochastic model designed to illustrate the adaptation of a population to variation in its environment. A piecewise-deterministic process modeling adaptation is coupled to a Feller logistic diffusion…
Motivated by the study of a parasite infection in a cell line, we introduce a general class of Markov processes for the modelling of population dynamics. The population process evolves as a diffusion with positive jumps whose rate is a…
Our paper computationally explores the extinction dynamics of an animal species effected by a sudden spike in mortality due to an extreme event. In our study, the animal species has a 2-year life cycle and is endowed with a high survival…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
Longevity of a taxonomic group is an important issue in understanding the dynamics of evolution. In this respect a key observation is that genera, families or orders can each be assigned a characteristic average lifetime [Van Valen, L.,…
Many socio-economic and biological processes can be modeled as systems of interacting individuals. The behaviour of such systems can be often described within game-theoretic models. In these lecture notes, we introduce fundamental concepts…
We study how environmental stochasticity influences the long-term population size in certain one- and two-species models. The difficulty is that even when one can prove that there is persistence, it is usually impossible to say anything…
This survey concerns the study of quasi-stationary distributions with a specific focus on models derived from ecology and population dynamics. We are concerned with the long time behavior of different stochastic population size processes…
We consider a class of biologically-motivated stochastic processes in which a unicellular organism divides its resources (volume or damaged proteins, in particular) symmetrically or asymmetrically between its progeny. Assuming the final…
We introduce a model for the evolution of species triggered by generation of novel features and exhaustive combination with other available traits. Under the assumption that innovations are rare, we obtain a bursty branching process of…
Neutral dynamics, where taxa are assumed to be demographically equivalent and their abundance is governed solely by the stochasticity of the underlying birth-death process, has proved itself as an important minimal model that accounts for…
This paper theoretically analyzes a phenomenological stochastic model for bacterial growth. This model comprises cell division and the linear growth of cells, where growth rates and cell cycles are drawn from lognormal distributions. We…
We study a model of stochastic evolutionary game dynamics in which the probabilities that agents choose suboptimal actions are dependent on payoff consequences. We prove a sample path large deviation principle, characterizing the rate of…
We consider an exponentially growing population of cells undergoing mutations and ask about the effect of reproductive fluctuations (genetic drift) on its long-term evolution. We combine first step analysis with the stochastic dynamics of a…
Fluctuations in biodiversity, large and small, are pervasive in the fossil record, yet we do not understand the processes generating them. Here we extend theory from non-equilibrium statistical physics to describe the previously unaccounted…
In this work we construct individual-based models that give rise to the generalized logistic model at the mean-field deterministic level and that allow us to interpret the parameters of these models in terms of individual interactions. We…
Body size drives the energetic demands of organisms, constraining trophic interactions between species and playing a significant role in shaping the feasibility of species' populations in a community. On macroevolutionary timescales, these…
We study time continuous branching processes with exponentially distributed lifetimes, with two types of cells that proliferate according to binary fission. A range of possible system dynamics are considered, each of which is characterized…
Twenty years ago, after analysing palaeontological data, Raup and Sepkoski suggested that mass extinctions on Earth appear cyclically in time with a period of approximately 26 million years (My). To explain the 26My period, a number of…
Phenotypic plasticity and its evolution may help evolutionary rescue in a novel and stressful environment, especially if environmental novelty reveals cryptic genetic variation that enables the evolution of increased plasticity. However,…