Related papers: Bacteria are not Lamarckian
In environments that vary frequently and unpredictably, bet-hedgers can overtake the population. Diversifying bet-hedgers have a diverse set of offspring so that, no matter the conditions they find themselves in, at least some offspring…
Interactions among individuals in natural populations often occur in a dynamically changing environment. Understanding the role of environmental variation in population dynamics has long been a central topic in theoretical ecology and…
We advance a famous principle - causality principle - but under a new view. This principle is a principium automatically leading to most fundamental laws of the nature. It is the inner origin of variation, rules evolutionary processes of…
Bacteria have been a source of inspiration for the design of evolutionary algorithms. At the beginning of the 20th century synthetic biology was born, a discipline whose goal is the design of biological systems that do not exist in nature,…
Consider a population of organisms that harvest free energy from their environment to reproduce. This paper shows that if the organisms' reproductive rates are proportional to the amount of physical free energy that they can convert into…
We propose an alternative to the prevailing two origin of life narratives, one based on a replicator first hypothesis, and one based on a metabolism first hypothesis. Both hypotheses have known difficulties: All known evolvable molecular…
Baldwinian and Lamarckian evolution have existed for a long time in evolutionary algorithms (EAs) without ever dominating the academic literature or practical applications. In this work, we use modern empirical and theoretical methods to…
Dispersal is a well recognized driver of ecological and evolutionary dynamics, and simultaneously an evolving trait. Dispersal evolution has traditionally been studied in single-species metapopulations so that it remains unclear how…
A central goal of evolutionary biology is to explain the origins and distribution of diversity across life. Beyond species or genetic diversity, we also observe diversity in the circuits (genetic or otherwise) underlying complex functional…
Quantum systems achieve objectivity by redundantly encoding information about themselves into the surrounding environment, through a mechanism known as quantum Darwinism. When this happens, observes measure the environment and infer the…
How specific environmental contexts contribute to the robustness and variation of developmental trajectories and evolutionary transitions is a central point in Eco-Evo-Devo. However, the articulation of ecological, evolutionary and…
It is by now well established that galaxy evolution is driven by intrinsic and environmental processes, both contributing to shape the observed properties of galaxies. A number of early studies, both observational and theoretical, have…
How adaptive evolution to one environmental stress improves or suppresses adaptation to another is an important problem in evolutionary biology. For instance, in microbiology, the evolution of bacteria to be resistant to different…
The profound impact of Darwin's theory of evolution on biology has led to the acceptance of the theory in many complex systems that lie well beyond its original domain. Culture is one example that also exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary…
A simple model of species origin resulted from dynamic features of a population, solely, is developed. The model is based on the evolution optimality in space distribution, and the selection is gone over the mobility. Some biological issues…
Organisms and ecological groups accumulate evidence to make decisions. Classic experiments and theoretical studies have explored this process when the correct choice is fixed during each trial. However, we live in a constantly changing…
Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor…
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…
We attempt to provide a comprehensive model of evolution of science across millennia taking into account the contributions of other intellectual traditions, cultural value system and increasing in sophistication of humans in their study of…
Biases in molecular evolution can significantly influence evolutionary trajectories. They have been described in a variety of contexts such as development and mutation, but not for acquiring new functions (i.e. emergence). Here, we…