Frequent asymmetric migrations suppress natural selection in spatially structured populations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Abbara, Alia, Bitbol, Anne-Florence
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Abbara, Alia
Bitbol, Anne-Florence
author_facet Abbara, Alia
Bitbol, Anne-Florence
contents Natural microbial populations often have complex spatial structures. This can impact their evolution, in particular the ability of mutants to take over. While mutant fixation probabilities are known to be unaffected by sufficiently symmetric structures, evolutionary graph theory has shown that some graphs can amplify or suppress natural selection, in a way that depends on microscopic update rules. We propose a model of spatially structured populations on graphs directly inspired by batch culture experiments, alternating within-deme growth on nodes and migration-dilution steps, and yielding successive bottlenecks. This setting bridges models from evolutionary graph theory with Wright-Fisher models. Using a branching process approach, we show that spatial structure with frequent migrations can only yield suppression of natural selection. More precisely, in this regime, circulation graphs, where the total incoming migration flow equals the total outgoing one in each deme, do not impact fixation probability, while all other graphs strictly suppress selection. Suppression becomes stronger as the asymmetry between incoming and outgoing migrations grows. Amplification of natural selection can nevertheless exist in a restricted regime of rare migrations and very small fitness advantages, where we recover the predictions of evolutionary graph theory for the star graph.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_10879
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Frequent asymmetric migrations suppress natural selection in spatially structured populations
Abbara, Alia
Bitbol, Anne-Florence
Populations and Evolution
Biological Physics
Natural microbial populations often have complex spatial structures. This can impact their evolution, in particular the ability of mutants to take over. While mutant fixation probabilities are known to be unaffected by sufficiently symmetric structures, evolutionary graph theory has shown that some graphs can amplify or suppress natural selection, in a way that depends on microscopic update rules. We propose a model of spatially structured populations on graphs directly inspired by batch culture experiments, alternating within-deme growth on nodes and migration-dilution steps, and yielding successive bottlenecks. This setting bridges models from evolutionary graph theory with Wright-Fisher models. Using a branching process approach, we show that spatial structure with frequent migrations can only yield suppression of natural selection. More precisely, in this regime, circulation graphs, where the total incoming migration flow equals the total outgoing one in each deme, do not impact fixation probability, while all other graphs strictly suppress selection. Suppression becomes stronger as the asymmetry between incoming and outgoing migrations grows. Amplification of natural selection can nevertheless exist in a restricted regime of rare migrations and very small fitness advantages, where we recover the predictions of evolutionary graph theory for the star graph.
title Frequent asymmetric migrations suppress natural selection in spatially structured populations
topic Populations and Evolution
Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.10879