Evolutionary paths under catastrophes

TL;DR

This paper presents a model showing that the possibility of catastrophes causes evolutionary paths to accelerate and become less predictable, supporting the idea that catastrophes speed up evolution by disrupting dominant species.

Contribution

The study introduces a new model analyzing the impact of catastrophes on evolutionary dynamics, revealing a transition from logarithmic to linear growth in fitness changes.

Findings

Catastrophes cause linear growth in fitness changes over time.

Evolutionary paths become less predictable with catastrophes.

Catastrophes support faster evolution by disrupting dominant species.

Abstract

We introduce a model to study the impact of catastrophes on evolutionary paths. If we do not allow catastrophes the number of changes in the maximum fitness of a population grows logarithmically with respect to time. Allowing catastrophes (no matter how rare) yields a drastically different behavior. When catastrophes are possible the number of changes in the maximum fitness of the population grows linearly with time. Moreover, the evolutionary paths are a lot less predictable when catastrophes are possible. Our results can be seen as supporting the hypothesis that catastrophes speed up evolution by disrupting dominant species and creating space for new species to emerge and evolve.