Teaching Evolutionary Mechanisms: Genetic Drift and M&M's®

Evaluating genetic drift in time-series evolutionary analysis

The Wright-Fisher model is the most popular population model for describing the behaviour of evolutionary systems with a finite population size. Approximations have commonly been used but the model itself has rarely been tested against time-resolved genomic data. Here, we evaluate the extent to which it can be inferred as the correct model under a likelihood framework. Given genome-wide data fr...

Evolutionary Drift and Equilibrium Selection

This paper develops an approach to equilibrium selection in game theory based on studying . the learning process through which equilibrium is achieved. The differential equations derived from models of interactive learning typically have stationary states that are not isolated. Instead, Nash equilibria that specify different out-of-equilibrium behaviour appear in connected components of station...

Evolutionary Drift and Equilibrium Selection1

This paper develops an approach to equilibrium selection in game theory based on studying the equilibriating process through which equilibrium is achieved. The di®erential equations derived from models of interactive learning typically have stationary states that are not isolated. Instead, Nash equilibria that specify the same behavior on the equilibrium path, but di®erent out-of-equilibrium be...

Genetic drift

What is genetic drift? Say you have a population of 5,000 people. That makes 10,000 copies of each gene. Imagine a gene where 3,000 of those copies are of one particular allele or type. In the next generation, there won’t necessarily be exactly 3,000 copies again. There may be 3,050 or 2,960 copies instead. Some gametes get randomly picked out of all the possible gametes that could have been us...

Evolutionary Drift Among Isophenotypic Genotypes