Geometry-Induced Competitive Release in a Meta-Population Model of Range Expansions in Disordered Environments

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nuñez, Jimmy Gonzalez, Beller, Daniel A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Nuñez, Jimmy Gonzalez
Beller, Daniel A.
author_facet Nuñez, Jimmy Gonzalez
Beller, Daniel A.
contents Rare evolutionary events, such as the rise to prominence of deleterious mutations, can have drastic impacts on the evolution of growing populations. Heterogeneous environments may reduce the influence of selection on evolutionary outcomes through various mechanisms, including pinning of genetic lineages and of the population fronts. These effects play significant roles in enabling competitive release of otherwise trapped mutations. In this work we show that environments containing random arrangements of "hotspot" patches, where locally abundant resources enhance growth rates equally for all sub-populations, give rise to massively enriched deleterious mutant clones. We derive a geometrical optics description of mutant bubbles, which result from interactions with hotspots, that successfully predicts the observed increase in mutant survival. This prediction requires no fitting parameters and holds well in scenarios of rare mutations and of adaptation from standing variation. In addition, we find that the influence of environmental noise in shaping the fate of rare mutations is maximal near a percolation transition of overlapping discs, beyond which mutant survival decreases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_15221
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Geometry-Induced Competitive Release in a Meta-Population Model of Range Expansions in Disordered Environments
Nuñez, Jimmy Gonzalez
Beller, Daniel A.
Populations and Evolution
Statistical Mechanics
Rare evolutionary events, such as the rise to prominence of deleterious mutations, can have drastic impacts on the evolution of growing populations. Heterogeneous environments may reduce the influence of selection on evolutionary outcomes through various mechanisms, including pinning of genetic lineages and of the population fronts. These effects play significant roles in enabling competitive release of otherwise trapped mutations. In this work we show that environments containing random arrangements of "hotspot" patches, where locally abundant resources enhance growth rates equally for all sub-populations, give rise to massively enriched deleterious mutant clones. We derive a geometrical optics description of mutant bubbles, which result from interactions with hotspots, that successfully predicts the observed increase in mutant survival. This prediction requires no fitting parameters and holds well in scenarios of rare mutations and of adaptation from standing variation. In addition, we find that the influence of environmental noise in shaping the fate of rare mutations is maximal near a percolation transition of overlapping discs, beyond which mutant survival decreases.
title Geometry-Induced Competitive Release in a Meta-Population Model of Range Expansions in Disordered Environments
topic Populations and Evolution
Statistical Mechanics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15221