Population aging through survival of the fit and stable

TL;DR

This paper investigates how resource limitations induce a correlation between mutation rate and fitness in populations with complex internal states, demonstrating collective effects beyond individual properties.

Contribution

It reveals that resource constraints can generate correlations between mutation rate and fitness, even when these are uncorrelated at the individual level.

Findings

Mutation rate and fitness become correlated due to resource limitations.

Collective effects emerge from interactions, not individual properties.

Population dynamics show increased stability through resource-induced correlations.

Abstract

Motivated by the wide range of known self-replicating systems, some far from genetics, we study a system composed by individuals having an internal dynamics with many possible states that are partially stable, with varying mutation rates. Individuals reproduce and die with a rate that is a property of each state, not necessarily related to its stability, and the offspring is born on the parent's state. The total population is limited by resources or space, as for example in a chemostat or a Petri dish. Our aim is to show that mutation rate and fitness become more correlated, \emph{even if they are completely uncorrelated for an isolated individual}, underlining the fact that the interaction induced by limitation of resources is by itself efficient for generating collective effects.