Whether in sexual or asexual organisms, selection among cell lineages during development is an effective way of eliminating deleterious mutations. Using a mathematical analysis, we find that relatively small differences in cell replication rates during development can translate into large differences in the proportion of mutant cells within the adult, especially when development involves a larg...

Despite their promise for simulating natural complexity, individual-based models (IBMs) are rarely used for ecological research or resource management. Few IBMs have been shown to reproduce realistic patterns of behavior by individual organisms. To test our IBM of stream salmonids and draw conclusions about foraging theory, we analyzed the IBM’s ability to reproduce six patterns of habitat sele...

Sexual selection has been mathematically modeled using quantitative genetics as well as population genetics. Two-locus simulation models have been used to study the evolution of male display and female preference. We present an individual-based simulation model of sexual selection in a quantitative genetic context. We show that under certain conditions Fisherian self-reinforcing sexual selectio...

The individualization of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) for virtual acoustics is a key technique for the optimization of the directional reproduction. This paper presents a subjective selection method for a fast, individual selection of one HRTF from a catalogue of non-individual ones. The selection method gives random access to sounds filtered with the HRTFs. In a first selection step...

A population of individuals is divided into groups. Individuals are recurrently randomly matched with individuals from their group to play a generic symmetric 2-player game. Deterministic interand intragroup dynamics are derived from a model of individual imitation within groups and individual migration between groups. Conditions are identified under which subsets (components) of the set of sta...

If we were told that a man lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was . . . . Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world . . . . If you look at the way natural selection works, it seems to follow that anything that ha...

Humans are constantly challenged to make use of internal models to fill in missing sensory information. We measured human performance in a simple motion extrapolation task where no feedback was provided in order to elucidate the models of object motion incorporated into observers' extrapolation strategies. There was no "right" model for extrapolation in this task. Observers consistently adopted...

Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are in this case counter-intuitive since they try to evolve a solution for the entire problem as a whole. EAs may show improvement when they can create more complex evolutionary units through some form of cooperative combination of sub-solutions similar to divide-and-conquer. In other words, instead of trying to evolve a single solution for the problem, solutions m...

Two selection experiments comparing the relative efficiencies of individual, family, and combination selection were conducted. The expected results for larval weight of Tribolium (h(2) = 0.20) and for pupal weight (h(2) = 0.40) were that combination selection would be a more efficient method than family selection, and that family selection would exceed individual selection. In experiment I, ind...