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A quasispecies on a moving oasis.

Michael M Desai1, David R Nelson

  • 1Department of Physics, Jefferson Laboratories, Harvard University, 17 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. desai@fas.harvard.edu

Theoretical Population Biology
|January 15, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Populations adapt to changing environments. This study shows that a moving favorable area, like an oasis, can lead to sharp population shifts and adaptation loss when its speed exceeds a critical threshold.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Population genetics
  • Theoretical ecology

Background:

  • Organisms adapt to environmental heterogeneity.
  • Maintaining adaptation to a specific region becomes challenging when that region is mobile.
  • The concept of quasispecies describes the distribution of genetic states in a population.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the conditions under which a population can maintain adaptations to a moving favorable environment (oasis).
  • To analyze the impact of oasis velocity on the balance between oasis-adapted and desert-adapted genotypes.
  • To determine critical velocities for population adaptation and genotype dominance shifts.

Main Methods:

  • Modeling a haploid population in an environment with a moving favorable patch (oasis) and a disadvantageous area (desert).
  • Analyzing genetic locus adaptation where genotypes have opposing advantages/disadvantages in the oasis and desert.
  • Calculating population dynamics and genotype ratios in response to varying oasis velocities.

Main Results:

  • The ratio of oasis-adapted to desert-adapted individuals shows sharp transitions at specific oasis velocities.
  • An extinction velocity was calculated, marking a limit for population survival.
  • A switching velocity was identified, above which desert-adapted genotypes dominate, analogous to the quasispecies error threshold.

Conclusions:

  • Population adaptation to a moving oasis is highly sensitive to the oasis's velocity.
  • Exceeding the switching velocity prevents the population from sustaining adaptations to the oasis.
  • This study provides insights into evolutionary dynamics in non-stationary, heterogeneous environments.

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