Effects of population growth on the success of invading mutants
Authored by Tobias Galla, Peter Ashcroft, Cassandra E R Smith, Matthew Garrod
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.03.014
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Abstract
Understanding if and how mutants reach fixation in populations is an
important question in evolutionary biology. We study the impact of
population growth has on the success of mutants. To systematically
understand the effects of growth we decouple competition from
reproduction; competition follows a birth death process and is governed
by an evolutionary game, while growth is determined by an externally
controlled branching rate. In stochastic simulations we find
non-monotonic behaviour of the fixation probability of mutants as the
speed of growth is varied; the right amount of growth can lead to a
higher success rate. These results are observed in both coordination and
coexistence game scenarios, and we find that the `one-third law' for
coordination games can break down in the presence of growth. We also
propose a simplified description in terms of stochastic differential
equations to approximate the individual-based model.
Tags
Cooperation
Dynamics
Evolutionary game
Evolutionary game theory
Strategies
Finite populations
Fixation probability
Growing populations
One-third law