Generalized Measures of Population Synchrony

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Motta, Francis C., McGoff, Kevin, Cummins, Breschine, Haase, Steven B.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Motta, Francis C.
McGoff, Kevin
Cummins, Breschine
Haase, Steven B.
author_facet Motta, Francis C.
McGoff, Kevin
Cummins, Breschine
Haase, Steven B.
contents Synchronized behavior among individuals is a ubiquitous feature of populations. Understanding mechanisms of (de)synchronization demands meaningful, interpretable, computable quantifications of synchrony, relevant to measurements that can be made of dynamic populations. Despite the importance to analyzing and modeling populations, existing notions of synchrony often lack rigorous definitions, may be specialized to a particular experimental system and/or measurement, or may have undesirable properties that limit their utility. We introduce a notion of synchrony for populations of individuals occupying a compact metric space that depends on the Fréchet variance of the distribution of individuals. We establish several fundamental and desirable mathematical properties of this synchrony measure, including continuity and invariance to metric scaling. We establish a general approximation result that controls the disparity between synchrony in the true space and the synchrony observed through a discretization of state space, as may occur when observable states are limited by measurement constraints. We develop efficient algorithms to compute synchrony in a variety of state spaces, including all finite state spaces and empirical distributions on the circle, and provide accessible implementations in an open-source Python module. To demonstrate the usefulness of the synchrony measure in biological applications, we investigate several biologically relevant models of mechanisms that can alter the dynamics of synchrony over time, and reanalyze published data concerning the dynamics of the intraerythrocytic developmental cycles of $\textit{Plasmodium}$ parasites. We anticipate that the rigorous definition of population synchrony and the mathematical and biological results presented here will be broadly useful in analyzing and modeling populations in a variety of contexts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_15987
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generalized Measures of Population Synchrony
Motta, Francis C.
McGoff, Kevin
Cummins, Breschine
Haase, Steven B.
Populations and Evolution
Probability
Quantitative Methods
92B25 (Primary) 92D25, 92-08, 92-10, 92-04 (Secondary)
Synchronized behavior among individuals is a ubiquitous feature of populations. Understanding mechanisms of (de)synchronization demands meaningful, interpretable, computable quantifications of synchrony, relevant to measurements that can be made of dynamic populations. Despite the importance to analyzing and modeling populations, existing notions of synchrony often lack rigorous definitions, may be specialized to a particular experimental system and/or measurement, or may have undesirable properties that limit their utility. We introduce a notion of synchrony for populations of individuals occupying a compact metric space that depends on the Fréchet variance of the distribution of individuals. We establish several fundamental and desirable mathematical properties of this synchrony measure, including continuity and invariance to metric scaling. We establish a general approximation result that controls the disparity between synchrony in the true space and the synchrony observed through a discretization of state space, as may occur when observable states are limited by measurement constraints. We develop efficient algorithms to compute synchrony in a variety of state spaces, including all finite state spaces and empirical distributions on the circle, and provide accessible implementations in an open-source Python module. To demonstrate the usefulness of the synchrony measure in biological applications, we investigate several biologically relevant models of mechanisms that can alter the dynamics of synchrony over time, and reanalyze published data concerning the dynamics of the intraerythrocytic developmental cycles of $\textit{Plasmodium}$ parasites. We anticipate that the rigorous definition of population synchrony and the mathematical and biological results presented here will be broadly useful in analyzing and modeling populations in a variety of contexts.
title Generalized Measures of Population Synchrony
topic Populations and Evolution
Probability
Quantitative Methods
92B25 (Primary) 92D25, 92-08, 92-10, 92-04 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15987