Dresden 2020 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems I (joint session BP/DY)

BP 6.5: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2020, 16:30–16:45, SCH A251

Effect of alternating between sexual and asexual reproduction on the number of expected mating types in isogamous species — •Ernesto Berríos-Caro¹, George W. A. Constable², and Tobias Galla¹ — ¹The University of Manchester — ²University of York

The number of mating types of sexually reproducing isogamous species can range from two to thousands. The latter case is highly unusual and contradicts the argument that new types are sexually advantaged, which would imply a consistent growth of the number of types. Recent works based on a Moran-type individual-based model seem to suggest that the rate of sexual reproduction plays a crucial role in the low number of mating types observed in nature. Motivated by species that alternate between sexual and asexual reproduction, we subject the reproduction events to a switching environment of both states. We explore how the distribution of the number of mating types is affected by different switching regimes. When the environments switch slowly, we find that the distribution of mating types can become bimodal if the population size is large enough and the time spent in both environments (on average) is similar. When the switching is fast, we find that the system behaves as if it were in an effective single-fixed environment, where the sex is facultative. Also, we investigate the transition from slow to fast switching environments by calculating the distributions of the number of types in each environment based on the Kolmogorov equations of the system.