Sharp gene pool transition in a population affected by phenotype-based selective hunting

Abstract

We use a microscopic model of population dynamics, a modified version of the well known Penna model, to study some aspects of microevolution. This research is motivated by recent reports on the effect of selective hunting on the gene pool of bighorn sheep living in the Ram Mountain region, in Canada. Our model finds a sharp transition in the structure of the gene pool as some threshold for the number of animals hunted is reached. 87.23.-n, 05.10.Ln

Scaling Effects in the Penna Ageing Model

“…One can conclude that the Penna model has scaling properties when simulations are performed under specifically related simulation parameters. These results are in better agreement with scaling than those obtained by [6]. Nevertheless, it is important to note that populations with different sizes of the genomes and very similar age distributions are characterised by very different other parameters describing their genetic status as well as reproduction potential.…”

“…Our question was if it is possible to generate in simulations populations with similar age distributions independently of the genome size. This problem was already addressed by [5] without conclusive results and recently by [6] whose results suggested roughly the scaling properties of the model. In our analyses we have tried to show how the parameters describing the simulated populations change depending on the length of the genomes.…”

Evolution of biodiversity and sympatric speciation through competition in a unimodal distribution of resources

“…On the contrary, for the ageing bit-string we consider only harmful mutations because of their strong predominance in nature. With the use of this phenotype characterization it is possible to establish a computational representation of intraspecific and/or environmental interaction and/or sexual selection [15][16][17].…”