Success probability for selectively neutral invading species in the line model with a random fitness landscape

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a spatial line model where a neutral mutant's chance of fixation exceeds the neutral expectation due to environmental randomness, revealing that randomness confers an advantage to minority mutations especially in larger populations.

Contribution

It provides precise asymptotics for fixation probability in a stochastic fitness landscape, demonstrating the advantage of randomness for neutral mutants in spatial models.

Findings

Fixation probability exceeds 1/N due to environmental randomness

Advantage increases with system size

Mutants exploit favorable environments rather than pockets of neutrality

Abstract

We consider a spatial (line) model for invasion of a population by a single mutant with a stochastically selectively neutral fitness landscape, independent from the fitness landscape for non-mutants. This model is similar to those considered in Farhang-Sardroodi et al. [PLOS Comput. Biol., 13(11), 2017; J. R. Soc. Interface, 16(157), 2019]. We show that the probability of mutant fixation in a population of size $N$, starting from a single mutant, is greater than $1/N$, which would be the case if there were no variation in fitness whatsoever. In the small variation regime, we recover precise asymptotics for the success probability of the mutant. This demonstrates that the introduction of randomness provides an advantage to minority mutations in this model, and shows that the advantage increases with the system size. We further demonstrate that the mutants have an advantage in this setting only because they are better at exploiting unusually favorable environments when they arise, and not because they are any better at exploiting pockets of favorability in an environment that is selectively neutral overall.