Another Way to Calculate Fitness from Life History Variables: Solution of the Age-Structured Logistic Equation

We consider a model for Darwinian evolution in an asexual population with a large but non-constant populations size characterized by a natural birth rate, a logistic death rate modelling competition and a probability of mutation at each birth event. In the present paper, we study the long-term behavior of the system in the limit of large population $(K\to \infty)$ size, rare mutations $(u\to 0)$, and small mutational effects $(\sigma\to 0)$, proving convergence to the canonic...

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 also study the effect of internal fluctuations on the long-time dynamics for the different models that have been widely used in the literature, such as the theta-logistic and Savageau models. In particular, we determine the conditions for po...

A deterministic model of an age-structured population with genetics analogous to the discrete time Penna model of genetic evolution is constructed on the basis of the Lotka-Volterra scheme. It is shown that if, as in the Penna model, genetic information is represented by the fraction of defective genes in the population, the population numbers for each specific individual's age are represented by exactly the same functions of age in both models. This gives us a new possibilit...

Biological aging is characterized by an age-dependent increase in the probability of death and by a decrease in the reproductive capacity. Individual age-dependent rates of survival and reproduction have a strong impact on population dynamics, and the genetic elements determining survival and reproduction are under different selective forces throughout an organism lifespan. Here we develop a highly versatile numerical model of genome evolution --- both asexual and sexual --- ...

We present a model for evolution and extinction in large ecosystems. The model incorporates the effects of interactions between species and the influences of abiotic environmental factors. We study the properties of the model by approximate analytic solution and also by numerical simulation, and use it to make predictions about the distribution of extinctions and species lifetimes that we would expect to see in real ecosystems. It should be possible to test these predictions ...

New models for evolutionary processes of mutation accumulation allow hypotheses about the age-specificity of mutational effects to be translated into predictions of heterogeneous population hazard functions. We apply these models to questions in the biodemography of longevity, including proposed explanations of Gompertz hazards and mortality plateaus, and use them to explore the possibility of melding evolutionary and functional models of aging.

The aim of this study is to compare the growth speed of different cell populations measured by their Malthus parameter. We focus on both the age-structured and size-structured equations. A first population (of reference) is composed of cells all aging or growing at the same rate $\bar v$. A second population (with variability) is composed of cells each aging or growing at a rate $v$ drawn according to a non-degenerated distribution $\rho$ with mean $\bar v$. In a first part, ...

On infinitesimally short time interval various processes contributing to population change tend to operate independently so that we can simply add their contributions (Metz and Diekmann (1986)). This is one of the cornerstones for differential equations modeling in general. Complicated models for processes interacting in a complex manner may be built up, and not only in population dynamics. The principle holds as long as the various contributions are taken into account exactl...

Mutualistic communities have an internal structure that makes them resilient to external per- turbations. Late research has focused on their stability and the topology of the relations between the different organisms to explain the reasons of the system robustness. Much less attention has been invested in analyzing the systems dynamics. The main population models in use are modifi- cations of the logistic equation with additional terms to account for the benefits produced by ...

W. D. Hamilton's celebrated formula for the age-specific force of natural selection furnishes predictions for senescent mortality due to mutation accumulation, at the price of reliance on a linear approximation. Applying to Hamilton's setting the full non-linear demographic model for mutation accumulation of Evans et al. (2007), we find surprising differences. Non-linear interactions cause the collapse of Hamilton-style predictions in the most commonly studied case, refine pr...