scholarly journals Digital Evolution for Ecology Research: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Dolson ◽  
Charles Ofria
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Digital Evolution ◽  
Controlled System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Evolution Systems

In digital evolution, populations of computational organisms evolve via the same principles that govern natural selection in nature. These platforms have been used to great effect as a controlled system in which to conduct evolutionary experiments and develop novel evolutionary theory. In addition to their complex evolutionary dynamics, many digital evolution systems also produce rich ecological communities. As a result, digital evolution is also a powerful tool for research on eco-evolutionary dynamics. Here, we review the research to date in which digital evolution platforms have been used to address eco-evolutionary (and in some cases purely ecological) questions. This work has spanned a wide range of topics, including competition, facilitation, parasitism, predation, and macroecological scaling laws. We argue for the value of further ecological research in digital evolution systems and present some particularly promising directions for further research.

Cooperation, Coordination, and Collective Action

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Cronk ◽  
Beth L. Leech
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Coordination Problems ◽  
Evolutionary Biologist ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Two Bodies

This book investigates a wide range of ideas, theories, and existing empirical research relevant to the study of the complex and diverse phenomenon of human cooperation. Issues relating to cooperation are examined from the perspective of evolutionary theory, political science, and related social sciences. The book draws upon two bodies of work: Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (1965) and George C. Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966). Olson, an economist, and Williams, an evolutionary biologist, both argued that a focus on groups would not provide a complete understanding of collective action and other social behaviors. This introductory chapter discusses some important definitions relating to cooperation, with particular emphasis on collective action and collective action dilemmas, along with coordination and coordination problems. It also provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

Evolution, theory of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth A. Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Genetic Mutation ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Public Sphere

The biological theory of evolution advances the view that the variety and forms of life on earth are the result of descent with modification from the earliest forms of life. Evolutionary theory does not attempt to explain the origin of life itself, that is, how the earliest forms of life came to exist, nor does it apply to the history of changes of the non-biological parts of the universe, which are also often described as ’evolutionary’. The mechanisms of natural selection, mutation and speciation are used in evolutionary theory to explain the relations and characteristics of all life forms. Modern evolutionary theory explains a wide range of natural phenomena, including the deep resemblances among organisms, the diversity of life forms, organisms’ possession of vestigial organs and the good fit or ’adaptedness’ between organisms and their environment. Often summarized as ’survival of the fittest’, the mechanism of natural selection actually includes several distinct processes. There must be variation in traits among the members of a population; these traits must be passed on from parents to offspring; and the different traits must confer differential advantage for reproducing successfully in that environment. Because evidence for each of these processes can be gathered independently of the evolutionary claim, natural selection scenarios are robustly testable. When a trait in a population has arisen because it was directly selected in this fashion, it is called an adaptation. Genetic mutation is the originating source of variation, and selection processes shape that variation into adaptive forms; random genetic drift and various levels and forms of selection dynamic developed by geneticists have been integrated into a general theory of evolutionary change that encompasses natural selection and genetic mutation as complementary processes. Detailed ecological studies are used to provide evidence for selection scenarios involving the evolution of species in the wild. Evolutionary theory is supported by an unusually wide range of scientific evidence, gaining its support from fields as diverse as geology, embryology, molecular genetics, palaeontology, climatology and functional morphology. Because of tensions between an evolutionary view of homo sapiens and some religious beliefs, evolutionary theory has remained controversial in the public sphere far longer than no less well-supported scientific theories from other sciences.

scholarly journals Symbiosis in Digital Evolution: Past, Present, and Future

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anya E. Vostinar ◽  
Katherine G. Skocelas ◽  
Alexander Lalejini ◽  
Luis Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
De Novo ◽  
Current Model ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Model Systems ◽  
Digital Evolution ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Data Tracking

Symbiosis, the living together of unlike organisms as symbionts, is ubiquitous in the natural world. Symbioses occur within and across all scales of life, from microbial to macro-faunal systems. Further, the interactions between symbionts are multimodal in both strength and type, can span from parasitic to mutualistic within one partnership, and persist over generations. Studying the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of symbiosis in natural or laboratory systems poses a wide range of challenges, including the long time scales at which symbioses evolve de novo, the limited capacity to experimentally control symbiotic interactions, the weak resolution at which we can quantify interactions, and the idiosyncrasies of current model systems. These issues are especially challenging when seeking to understand the ecological effects and evolutionary pressures on and of a symbiosis, such as how a symbiosis may shift between parasitic and mutualistic modes and how that shift impacts the dynamics of the partner population. In digital evolution, populations of computational organisms compete, mutate, and evolve in a virtual environment. Digital evolution features perfect data tracking and allows for experimental manipulations that are impractical or impossible in natural systems. Furthermore, modern computational power allows experimenters to observe thousands of generations of evolution in minutes (as opposed to several months or years), which greatly expands the range of possible studies. As such, digital evolution is poised to become a keystone technique in our methodological repertoire for studying the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of symbioses. Here, we review how digital evolution has been used to study symbiosis, and we propose a series of open questions that digital evolution is well-positioned to answer.

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the follow-up work The Descent of Man in 1871. In these works, he argued for his theory of evolution through natural selection, applying it to all organisms, living and dead, including our own species, Homo sapiens. Although controversial from the start, Darwin’s thinking was deeply embedded in the culture of his day, that of a middle-class Englishman. Evolution as such was an immediate success in scientific circles, but although the mechanism of selection had supporters in the scientific community (especially among those working with fast-breeding organisms), its real success was in the popular domain. Natural selection, and particularly the side mechanism of sexual selection, were known to all and popular themes in fiction and elsewhere.

The future of research with carnivorous plants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron M. Ellison ◽  
Lubomír Adamec
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Population Biology ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Species Concept ◽  
Intraspecific Variability ◽  
Carnivorous Plants ◽  
Assisted Migration ◽  
Transcriptomic Data ◽  
Phylogenetic Framework

The material presented in the chapters of Carnivorous Plants: Physiology, Ecology, and Evolution together provide a suite of common themes that could provide a framework for increasing progress in understanding carnivorous plants. All speciose genera would benefit from more robust, intra-generic classifications in a phylogenetic framework that uses a unified species concept. As more genomic, proteomic, and transcriptomic data accrue, new insights will emerge regarding trap biochemistry and regulation; interactions with commensals; and the importance of intraspecific variability on which natural selection works. Continued elaboration of field experiments will provide new insights into basic physiology; population biology; plant-animal and plant-microbe relationships; and evolutionary dynamics, all of which will aid conservation efforts and contribute to discussions of assisted migration as the climate continues to change.

scholarly journals Predicting specific impulse distributions for spherical explosives in the extreme near-field using a Gaussian function

2021 ◽  
pp. 204141962199349
Author(s):  
Jordan J Pannell ◽  
George Panoutsos ◽  
Sam B Cooke ◽  
Dan J Pope ◽  
Sam E Rigby
Keyword(s):  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Near Field ◽  
Specific Impulse ◽  
Gaussian Function ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Blast Load ◽  
Structural Deformation ◽  
Load Prediction ◽  
Validation Data ◽  
Wide Range

Accurate quantification of the blast load arising from detonation of a high explosive has applications in transport security, infrastructure assessment and defence. In order to design efficient and safe protective systems in such aggressive environments, it is of critical importance to understand the magnitude and distribution of loading on a structural component located close to an explosive charge. In particular, peak specific impulse is the primary parameter that governs structural deformation under short-duration loading. Within this so-called extreme near-field region, existing semi-empirical methods are known to be inaccurate, and high-fidelity numerical schemes are generally hampered by a lack of available experimental validation data. As such, the blast protection community is not currently equipped with a satisfactory fast-running tool for load prediction in the near-field. In this article, a validated computational model is used to develop a suite of numerical near-field blast load distributions, which are shown to follow a similar normalised shape. This forms the basis of the data-driven predictive model developed herein: a Gaussian function is fit to the normalised loading distributions, and a power law is used to calculate the magnitude of the curve according to established scaling laws. The predictive method is rigorously assessed against the existing numerical dataset, and is validated against new test models and available experimental data. High levels of agreement are demonstrated throughout, with typical variations of <5% between experiment/model and prediction. The new approach presented in this article allows the analyst to rapidly compute the distribution of specific impulse across the loaded face of a wide range of target sizes and near-field scaled distances and provides a benchmark for data-driven modelling approaches to capture blast loading phenomena in more complex scenarios.

‘Short-Spanned Living Creatures’: Evolutionary Perspectives in Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Aaron Green
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Simple Structure ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Evolutionary Perspectives

Abstract In Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Charles Lyell appraised the distinct contribution made by his protégé, Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species (1859)), to evolutionary theory: ‘Progression … is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection [… Darwin’s theory accounts] equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrogressive movement towards a simple structure’. In Rhoda Broughton’s first novel, Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867), written contemporaneously with Lyell’s book, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham prompts precisely this sort of Darwinian ambivalence to progress; but whether British civilization ‘advance[s] or retreat[s]’, her narrator adds that this prophesized state ‘will not be in our days’ – its realization exceeds the single lifespan. This article argues that Not Wisely, but Too Well is attentive to the irreconcilability of Darwinism to the Victorian ‘idea of progress’: Broughton’s novel, distinctly from its peers, raises the retrogressive and nihilistic potentials of Darwin’s theory and purposes them to reflect on the status of the individual in mid-century Britain.

The Causal Structure of Natural Selection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Pence
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Genetic Drift ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations

Recent arguments concerning the nature of causation in evolutionary theory, now often known as the debate between the 'causalist' and 'statisticalist' positions, have involved answers to a variety of independent questions – definitions of key evolutionary concepts like natural selection, fitness, and genetic drift; causation in multi-level systems; or the nature of evolutionary explanations, among others. This Element offers a way to disentangle one set of these questions surrounding the causal structure of natural selection. Doing so allows us to clearly reconstruct the approach that some of these major competing interpretations of evolutionary theory have to this causal structure, highlighting particular features of philosophical interest within each. Further, those features concern problems not exclusive to the philosophy of biology. Connections between them and, in two case studies, contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of physics demonstrate the potential value of broader collaboration in the understanding of evolution.

scholarly journals Evolutionary biology today and the call for an extended synthesis

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 20160145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas J. Futuyma
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Epigenetic Inheritance ◽  
Reaction Norm ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Extended Synthesis ◽  
Proximate Causation

Evolutionary theory has been extended almost continually since the evolutionary synthesis (ES), but except for the much greater importance afforded genetic drift, the principal tenets of the ES have been strongly supported. Adaptations are attributable to the sorting of genetic variation by natural selection, which remains the only known cause of increase in fitness. Mutations are not adaptively directed, but as principal authors of the ES recognized, the material (structural) bases of biochemistry and development affect the variety of phenotypic variations that arise by mutation and recombination. Against this historical background, I analyse major propositions in the movement for an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’. ‘Niche construction' is a new label for a wide variety of well-known phenomena, many of which have been extensively studied, but (as with every topic in evolutionary biology) some aspects may have been understudied. There is no reason to consider it a neglected ‘process’ of evolution. The proposition that phenotypic plasticity may engender new adaptive phenotypes that are later genetically assimilated or accommodated is theoretically plausible; it may be most likely when the new phenotype is not truly novel, but is instead a slight extension of a reaction norm already shaped by natural selection in similar environments. However, evolution in new environments often compensates for maladaptive plastic phenotypic responses. The union of population genetic theory with mechanistic understanding of developmental processes enables more complete understanding by joining ultimate and proximate causation; but the latter does not replace or invalidate the former. Newly discovered molecular phenomena have been easily accommodated in the past by elaborating orthodox evolutionary theory, and it appears that the same holds today for phenomena such as epigenetic inheritance. In several of these areas, empirical evidence is needed to evaluate enthusiastic speculation. Evolutionary theory will continue to be extended, but there is no sign that it requires emendation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document