Project Details
Projekt
Evolution of altruistic defense traits in structured populations
Subject Area
Mathematics
Term
from 2012 to 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 221620745
In the first project phase we investigated under which conditions an inheritable behavioral trait of defense against parasites can spread in a structured population even if it is costly in the sense that individuals having a defense gene tend to have less offspring. In this proposed continuation project we study in a many-demes limit the time until the first fixation of a defense allele arising from rare mutations. We are going to show that this time to first fixation is logarithmic in the inverse mutation rate. So even for small mutation rates defense traits can appear on an evolutionary relevant time scale. Mathematically our central contribution is to prove and generalize the results of Dawson and Greven (2011) without using dual processes for a large class of processes. Moreover we are going to simulate our model on a two-dimensional lattice with nearest-neighbour migration. This will show whether our results for the many-demes limit also apply to biologically more relevant population structures.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
Subproject of
SPP 1590:
Probabilistic Structures in Evolution
