The costly provision of public goods serves as a model problem for the evolution of cooperative behavior, presenting a social dilemma between the collective benefits of shared resources and the indivi...

Spatial patterns, such as those in dryland vegetation models, have historically been studied in systems of reaction-diffusion systems with pattern onset via a Turing bifurcation from a spatially uni...

Seasonal respiratory infections typically surge within a limited time window, but what determines the exact timing within a given year is not well understood. Major causes of death show a similar seas...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Author summary Understanding how cooperation can evolve and be sustained is a central question in evolutionary biology and social science. One prominent explanation is indirect reciprocity, where indi...

This paper identifies systemic problems in how academic research is structured, evaluated, and supported. It argues for a realignment of incentives and institutional cultures to restore trust, enable ...

Genome-wide association studies have revealed that the genetic architectures of complex traits vary widely. This study shows that differences in architectures of highly polygenic traits arise mainly f...

Pallares et al. collect over a thousand RNA-seq and DNA samples from Drosophila melanogaster flies to investigate the genetic basis of gene expression variation. They find eQTLs for 98% of the genes a...

Synchronizing mating to extrinsic environmental cycles can increase the chance of successful reproduction. However, the resulting temporally-assorted mating may precipitate speciation if coupled with ...

Mathematical modeling uncovers how initial and target compositions limit microbial community selection, as inter-community selection clashes with intra-community selection like a rafter battling a wat...

Abstract Many ecological models treat exploitative competition in isolation from interference competition. Corresponding theory centers around the R* rule, according to which consumers that share a si...

Kiel University aims to attract more qualified women to professorship positions. The Institute of Zoology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural...

This Perspective discusses how well-established theoretical models of evolution can be adapted to study and generate testable predictions about the evolutionary dynamics of host–microbiota association...

The developing immune system must learn which microbes to tolerate and which to resist, but how this process unfolds is unclear. This study develops a mechanistic mathematical model of early-life gut ...

Microbial community assembly is shaped by the nature of available resources, with labile carbon sources such as glucose often expected to support low diversity due to rapid growth and competitive excl...