3,580 research outputs found
Queen control of a key life-history event in a eusocial insect
In eusocial insects, inclusive fitness theory predicts potential queenâworker conflict over the timing of events in colony life history. Whether queens or workers control the timing of these events is poorly understood. In the bumble-bee Bombus terrestris, queens exhibit a âswitch pointâ in which they switch from laying diploid eggs yielding females (workers and new queens) to laying haploid eggs yielding males. By rearing foundress queens whose worker offspring were removed as pupae and sexing their eggs using microsatellite genotyping, we found that queens kept in the complete absence of adult workers still exhibit a switch point. Moreover, the timing of their switch points relative to the start of egg-laying did not differ significantly from that of queens allowed to produce normal colonies. The finding that bumble-bee queens can express the switch point in the absence of workers experimentally demonstrates queen control of a key life-history event in eusocial insects. In addition, we found no evidence that workers affect the timing of the switch point either directly or indirectly via providing cues to queens, suggesting that workers do not fully express their interests in queenâworker conflicts over colony life history
A solvable model of the evolutionary loop
A model for the evolution of a finite population in a rugged fitness
landscape is introduced and solved. The population is trapped in an
evolutionary loop, alternating periods of stasis to periods in which it
performs adaptive walks. The dependence of the average rarity of the population
(a quantity related to the fitness of the most adapted individual) and of the
duration of stases on population size and mutation rate is calculated.Comment: 6 pages, EuroLaTeX, 1 figur
Competition and cooperation in one-dimensional stepping stone models
Cooperative mutualism is a major force driving evolution and sustaining
ecosystems. Although the importance of spatial degrees of freedom and number
fluctuations is well-known, their effects on mutualism are not fully
understood. With range expansions of microbes in mind, we show that, even when
mutualism confers a distinct selective advantage, it persists only in
populations with high density and frequent migrations. When these parameters
are reduced, mutualism is generically lost via a directed percolation process,
with a phase diagram strongly influenced by an exceptional DP2 transition.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Altruistic Contents of Quantum Prisoner's Dilemma
We examine the classical contents of quantum games. It is shown that a
quantum strategy can be interpreted as a classical strategies with effective
density-dependent game matrices composed of transposed matrix elements. In
particular, successful quantum strategies in dilemma games are interpreted in
terms of a symmetrized game matrix that corresponds to an altruistic game plan.Comment: Revised according to publisher's request: 4 pgs, 2 fgs, ReVTeX4. For
more info, go to http://www.mech.kochi-tech.ac.jp/cheon
Darwinian Selection and Non-existence of Nash Equilibria
We study selection acting on phenotype in a collection of agents playing
local games lacking Nash equilibria. After each cycle one of the agents losing
most games is replaced by a new agent with new random strategy and game
partner. The network generated can be considered critical in the sense that the
lifetimes of the agents is power law distributed. The longest surviving agents
are those with the lowest absolute score per time step. The emergent ecology is
characterized by a broad range of behaviors. Nevertheless, the agents tend to
be similar to their opponents in terms of performance.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Co-evolution of strategy and structure in complex networks with dynamical linking
Here we introduce a model in which individuals differ in the rate at which
they seek new interactions with others, making rational decisions modeled as
general symmetric two-player games. Once a link between two individuals has
formed, the productivity of this link is evaluated. Links can be broken off at
different rates. We provide analytic results for the limiting cases where
linking dynamics is much faster than evolutionary dynamics and vice-versa, and
show how the individual capacity of forming new links or severing inconvenient
ones maps into the problem of strategy evolution in a well-mixed population
under a different game. For intermediate ranges, we investigate numerically the
detailed interplay determined by these two time-scales and show that the scope
of validity of the analytical results extends to a much wider ratio of time
scales than expected
Group selection models in prebiotic evolution
The evolution of enzyme production is studied analytically using ideas of the
group selection theory for the evolution of altruistic behavior. In particular,
we argue that the mathematical formulation of Wilson's structured deme model
({\it The Evolution of Populations and Communities}, Benjamin/Cumings, Menlo
Park, 1980) is a mean-field approach in which the actual environment that a
particular individual experiences is replaced by an {\it average} environment.
That formalism is further developed so as to avoid the mean-field approximation
and then applied to the problem of enzyme production in the prebiotic context,
where the enzyme producer molecules play the altruists role while the molecules
that benefit from the catalyst without paying its production cost play the
non-altruists role. The effects of synergism (i.e., division of labor) as well
as of mutations are also considered and the results of the equilibrium analysis
are summarized in phase diagrams showing the regions of the space of parameters
where the altruistic, non-altruistic and the coexistence regimes are stable. In
general, those regions are delimitated by discontinuous transition lines which
end at critical points.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure
Prevalence of significant liver disease in human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients exposed to Didanosine: A cross sectional study
AIM: To identify significant liver disease [including nodular regenerative hyperplasia (NRH)] in asymptomatic Didanosine (DDI) exposed human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive patients. METHODS: Patients without known liver disease and with > 6 mo previous DDI use had liver stiffness assessed by transient elastography (TE). Those with alanine transaminase (ALT) above upper limit normal and/or TE > 7.65 kPa underwent ultrasound scan (U/S). Patients with: (1) abnormal U/S; or (2) elevated ALT plus TE > 7.65 kPa; or (3) TE > 9.4 kPa were offered trans-jugular liver biopsy (TJLB) with hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG) assessment. RESULTS: Ninety-nine patients were recruited, median age 50 years (range 31-70), 81% male and 70% men who have sex with men. Ninety-five percent with VL 9.4 kPa. Seventeen (17%) met criteria for TJLB, of whom 12 accepted. All had HVPG < 6 mmHg. Commonest histological findings were steatosis (n = 6), normal architecture (n = 4) and NRH (n = 2), giving a prevalence of previously undiagnosed NRH of 2% (95%CI: 0.55%, 7.0%). CONCLUSION: A screening strategy based on TE, liver enzymes and U/S scan found a low prevalence of previously undiagnosed NRH in DDI exposed, asymptomatic HIV positive patients. Patients were more likely to have steatosis highlighting the increased risk of multifactorial liver disease in this population
Fluctuations and Correlations in Lattice Models for Predator-Prey Interaction
Including spatial structure and stochastic noise invalidates the classical
Lotka-Volterra picture of stable regular population cycles emerging in models
for predator-prey interactions. Growth-limiting terms for the prey induce a
continuous extinction threshold for the predator population whose critical
properties are in the directed percolation universality class. Here, we discuss
the robustness of this scenario by considering an ecologically inspired
stochastic lattice predator-prey model variant where the predation process
includes next-nearest-neighbor interactions. We find that the corresponding
stochastic model reproduces the above scenario in dimensions 1< d \leq 4, in
contrast with mean-field theory which predicts a first-order phase transition.
However, the mean-field features are recovered upon allowing for
nearest-neighbor particle exchange processes, provided these are sufficiently
fast.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2-column revtex4 format. Emphasis on the lattice
predator-prey model with next-nearest-neighbor interaction (Rapid
Communication in PRE
Origin of complexity in multicellular organisms
Through extensive studies of dynamical system modeling cellular growth and
reproduction, we find evidence that complexity arises in multicellular
organisms naturally through evolution. Without any elaborate control mechanism,
these systems can exhibit complex pattern formation with spontaneous cell
differentiation. Such systems employ a `cooperative' use of resources and
maintain a larger growth speed than simple cell systems, which exist in a
homogeneous state and behave 'selfishly'. The relevance of the diversity of
chemicals and reaction dynamics to the growth of a multicellular organism is
demonstrated. Chaotic biochemical dynamics are found to provide the
multi-potency of stem cells.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, Physical Review Letters, 84, 6130, (2000
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