title: Evolutionary dynamics of invasion and escape.
abstract: Whenever life wants to invade a new habitat or escape from a lethal selection pressure, some mutations may be necessary to yield sustainable replication. We imagine situations like (i) a parasite infecting a new host, (ii) a species trying to invade a new ecological niche, (iii) cancer cells escaping from chemotherapy, (iv) viruses or microbes evading anti-microbial therapy, and also (v) the repeated attempts of combinatorial chemistry in the very beginning of life to produce self-replicating molecules. All such seemingly unrelated situations have a common structure in terms of Darwinian dynamics: a replicator with a basic reproductive ratio less than one attempts to find some mutations that allow indefinite survival. We develop a general theory, based on multitype branching processes, to describe the evolutionary dynamics of invasion and escape.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Kyushu University, Hakozaki 6-10-1, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan. yiwasscb@mbox.nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Yoh
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Iwasa
authors.forename: Franziska
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Michor
authors.forename: Martin A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Nowak
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004352:Drug Resistance, Microbial; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009154:Mutation; D000069497:Origin of Life; D019139:Tumor Escape