247 research outputs found
An Unusual Antagonistic Pleiotropy in the Penna Model for Biological Ageing
We combine the Penna Model for biological aging, which is based on the
mutation-accumulation theory, with a sort of antagonistic pleiotropy. We show
that depending on how the pleiotropy is introduced, it is possible to reproduce
both the humans mortality, which increases exponentially with age, and fruitfly
mortality, which decelerates at old ages, allowing the appearance of
arbitrarily old Methuselah's.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physica
Sympatric speciation in an age-structured population living on a lattice
A square lattice is introduced into the Penna model for biological aging in
order to study the evolution of diploid sexual populations under certain
conditions when one single locus in the individual's genome is considered as
identifier of species. The simulation results show, after several generations,
the flourishing and coexistence of two separate species in the same
environment, i.e., one original species splits up into two on the same
territory (sympatric speciation). As well, the mortalities obtained are in a
good agreement with the Gompertz law of exponential increase of mortality with
age.Comment: 5 pages including 3 encapsulated postscript (*.eps) figures; To
appear in European Physical Journal
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