1,781 research outputs found
Percolation on fitness landscapes: effects of correlation, phenotype, and incompatibilities
We study how correlations in the random fitness assignment may affect the
structure of fitness landscapes. We consider three classes of fitness models.
The first is a continuous phenotype space in which individuals are
characterized by a large number of continuously varying traits such as size,
weight, color, or concentrations of gene products which directly affect
fitness. The second is a simple model that explicitly describes
genotype-to-phenotype and phenotype-to-fitness maps allowing for neutrality at
both phenotype and fitness levels and resulting in a fitness landscape with
tunable correlation length. The third is a class of models in which particular
combinations of alleles or values of phenotypic characters are "incompatible"
in the sense that the resulting genotypes or phenotypes have reduced (or zero)
fitness. This class of models can be viewed as a generalization of the
canonical Bateson-Dobzhansky-Muller model of speciation. We also demonstrate
that the discrete NK model shares some signature properties of models with high
correlations. Throughout the paper, our focus is on the percolation threshold,
on the number, size and structure of connected clusters, and on the number of
viable genotypes.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
The dynamics of Machiavellian intelligence
The "Machiavellian intelligence" hypothesis (or the "social brain"
hypothesis) posits that large brains and distinctive cognitive abilities of
humans have evolved via intense social competition in which social competitors
developed increasingly sophisticated "Machiavellian" strategies as a means to
achieve higher social and reproductive success. Here we build a mathematical
model aiming to explore this hypothesis. In the model, genes control brains
which invent and learn strategies (memes) which are used by males to gain
advantage in competition for mates. We show that the dynamics of intelligence
has three distinct phases. During the dormant phase only newly invented memes
are present in the population. During the cognitive explosion phase the
population's meme count and the learning ability, cerebral capacity
(controlling the number of different memes that the brain can learn and use),
and Machiavellian fitness of individuals increase in a runaway fashion. During
the saturation phase natural selection resulting from the costs of having large
brains checks further increases in cognitive abilities. Overall, our results
suggest that the mechanisms underlying the "Machiavellian intelligence"
hypothesis can indeed result in the evolution of significant cognitive
abilities on the time scale of 10 to 20 thousand generations. We show that
cerebral capacity evolves faster and to a larger degree than learning ability.
Our model suggests that there may be a tendency toward a reduction in cognitive
abilities (driven by the costs of having a large brain) as the reproductive
advantage of having a large brain decreases and the exposure to memes increases
in modern societies.Comment: A revised version has been published by PNA
Dynamics of alliance formation and the egalitarian revolution
Arguably the most influential force in human history is the formation of
social coalitions and alliances (i.e., long-lasting coalitions) and their
impact on individual power. In most great ape species, coalitions occur at
individual and group levels and among both kin and non-kin. Nonetheless, ape
societies remain essentially hierarchical, and coalitions rarely weaken social
inequality. In contrast, human hunter-gatherers show a remarkable tendency to
egalitarianism, and human coalitions and alliances occur not only among
individuals and groups, but also among groups of groups. Here, we develop a
stochastic model describing the emergence of networks of allies resulting from
within-group competition for status or mates between individuals utilizing
dyadic information. The model shows that alliances often emerge in a phase
transition-like fashion if the group size, awareness, aggressiveness, and
persuasiveness of individuals are large and the decay rate of individual
affinities is small. With cultural inheritance of social networks, a single
leveling alliance including all group members can emerge in several
generations. Our results suggest that a rapid transition from a hierarchical
society of great apes to an egalitarian society of hunter-gatherers (often
referred to as "egalitarian revolution") could indeed follow an increase in
human cognitive abilities. The establishment of stable group-wide egalitarian
alliances creates conditions promoting the origin of cultural norms favoring
the group interests over those of individuals.Comment: 37 pages, 15 figure
Dynamics of clade diversification on the morphological hypercube
Understanding the relationship between taxonomic and morphological changes is
important in identifying the reasons for accelerated morphological
diversification early in the history of animal phyla. Here, a simple general
model describing the joint dynamics of taxonomic diversity and morphological
disparity is presented and applied to the data on the diversification of
blastozoans. I show that the observed patterns of deceleration in clade
diversification can be explicable in terms of the geometric structure of the
morphospace and the effects of extinction and speciation on morphological
disparity without invoking major declines in the size of morphological
transitions or taxonomic turnover rates. The model allows testing of hypotheses
about patterns of diversification and estimation of rates of morphological
evolution. In the case of blastozoans, I find no evidence that major changes in
evolutionary rates and mechanisms are responsible for the deceleration of
morphological diversification seen during the period of this clade's expansion.
At the same time, there is evidence for a moderate decline in overall rates of
morphological diversification concordant with a major change (from positive to
negative values) in the clade's growth rate.Comment: 8 pages, Latex, 2 postscript figures, submitted to Proc.R.Soc.Lond.
Effects of Epistasis and Pleiotropy on Fitness Landscapes
The factors that influence genetic architecture shape the structure of the
fitness landscape, and therefore play a large role in the evolutionary
dynamics. Here the NK model is used to investigate how epistasis and pleiotropy
-- key components of genetic architecture -- affect the structure of the
fitness landscape, and how they affect the ability of evolving populations to
adapt despite the difficulty of crossing valleys present in rugged landscapes.
Populations are seen to make use of epistatic interactions and pleiotropy to
attain higher fitness, and are not inhibited by the fact that valleys have to
be crossed to reach peaks of higher fitness.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. To appear in "Origin of Life and Evolutionary
Mechanisms" (P. Pontarotti, ed.). Evolutionary Biology: 16th Meeting 2012,
Springer-Verla
Complex dynamics in coevolution models with ratio-dependent functional response
We explore the complex dynamical behavior of two simple predator-prey models
of biological coevolution that on the ecological level account for
interspecific and intraspecific competition, as well as adaptive foraging
behavior. The underlying individual-based population dynamics are based on a
ratio-dependent functional response [W.M. Getz, J. Theor. Biol. 108, 623
(1984)]. Analytical results for fixed-point population sizes in some simple
communities are derived and discussed. In long kinetic Monte Carlo simulations
we find quite robust, approximate 1/f noise in species diversity and population
sizes, as well as power-law distributions for the lifetimes of individual
species and the durations of periods of relative evolutionary stasis. Adaptive
foraging enhances coexistence of species and produces a metastable
low-diversity phase and a stable high-diversity phase.Comment: 19 page
20 questions on Adaptive Dynamics
Abstract Adaptive Dynamics is an approach to studying evolutionary change when fitness is density or frequency dependent. Modern papers identifying themselves as using this approach first appeared in the 1990s, and have greatly increased up to the present. However, because of the rather technical nature of many of the papers, the approach is not widely known or understood by evolutionary biologists. In this review we aim to remedy this situation by outlining the methodology and then examining its strengths and weaknesses. We carry this out by posing and answering 20 key questions on Adaptive Dynamics. We conclude that Adaptive Dynamics provides a set of useful approximations for studying various evolutionary questions. However, as with any approximate method, conclusions based on Adaptive Dynamics are valid only under some restrictions that we discuss
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