Evolutionary dynamics is the study of the

mathematical principles Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, theories and theorems that are developed and proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include numb ...

according to which biological organisms as well as cultural ideas evolve and

evolved Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

. This is mostly achieved through the mathematical discipline of

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as Adaptation (biology), adaptation, s ...

, along with evolutionary game theory. Most population genetics considers changes in the frequencies of

allele An allele is a variant of the sequence of nucleotides at a particular location, or Locus (genetics), locus, on a DNA molecule. Alleles can differ at a single position through Single-nucleotide polymorphism, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), ...

s at a small number of

gene In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

loci. When

infinitesimal In mathematics, an infinitesimal number is a non-zero quantity that is closer to 0 than any non-zero real number is. The word ''infinitesimal'' comes from a 17th-century Modern Latin coinage ''infinitesimus'', which originally referred to the " ...

effects at a large number of gene loci are considered, one derives

quantitative genetics Quantitative genetics is the study of quantitative traits, which are phenotypes that vary continuously—such as height or mass—as opposed to phenotypes and gene-products that are Categorical variable, discretely identifiable—such as eye-col ...

. Traditional population genetic models deal with alleles and genotypes, and are frequently

stochastic Stochastic (; ) is the property of being well-described by a random probability distribution. ''Stochasticity'' and ''randomness'' are technically distinct concepts: the former refers to a modeling approach, while the latter describes phenomena; i ...

. In

evolutionary game theory Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies, and analytics into which Darwinism, Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 wi ...

, developed first by

John Maynard Smith John Maynard Smith (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004) was a British mathematical and theoretical biology, theoretical and mathematical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he ...

, evolutionary biology concepts may take a

deterministic Determinism is the metaphysical view that all events within the universe (or multiverse) can occur only in one possible way. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping mo ...

mathematical form, with selection acting directly on inherited phenotypes. These same models can be applied to studying the evolution of human preferences and ideologies. Many variants on these models have been developed, which incorporate weak selection, mutual population structure, stochasticity, etc. These models have relevance also to the generation and maintenance of tissues in mammals, since an understanding of tissue cell kinetics, architecture, and development from adult stem cells has important implications for aging and cancer.

References

External links

Evolutionary Game Dynamics
from

Clay Mathematics Institute The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) is a private, non-profit foundation dedicated to increasing and disseminating mathematical knowledge. Formerly based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the corporate address is now in Denver, Colorado. CMI's sc ...

Evolutionary biology {{evolution-stub