Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 14: Evolutionary Game Theory III (joint SOE, BP)

BP 14.4: Talk

Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 15:00–15:15, H44

Recombination suppresses peak escape in rugged fitness landscapes — •Joachim Krug and Su-Chan Park — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Germany

The adaptive value of recombination is at the heart of the long-standing debate about the evolutionary role of sex. Intuitively one might expect recombination to aid the escape of a population from sub-optimal fitness peaks and hence to accelerate the adaptive process. Here we show that the converse is true. For a deterministic, haploid two-locus model with two fitness peaks of unequal height, a stationary low-fitness solution concentrated at the lower peak emerges beyond a critical value of the recombination rate. The bifurcation giving rise to this solution is formally equivalent to an Ising-like phase transition. Numerical simulations show that the phenomenon persists in more complex multi-locus landscapes derived from experimental fitness measurements for the asexual fungus Aspergillus niger.