CIM Seminar with Carina Mugal

Abstract: Models in molecular evolution are typically separated into two groups, microevolutionary models that describe intra-species genetic variation and macroevolutionary models that describe inter-species genetic variation. Common to both settings is that derivation of analytical results and methodological developments frequently rely on the stationarity assumption, which corresponds to a stationary allele frequency distribution at the microevolutionary scale and a stationary sequence content at the macroevolutionary scale. Yet, most natural populations are not in equilibrium, since many evolutionary processes fluctuate over time and give rise to non-equilibrium conditions. To study the resulting non-equilibrium dynamics, we formulate a stochastic reproduction-selection model, which in the scaling limit converges to a Poisson random field model. This allows us to obtain exact expressions of relevant nonstationary allele frequency spectra, and to formulate micro- and macroevolutionary measures of evolutionary processes in molecular evolution. Moreover, our setting provides a step towards bridging the gap between micro- and macroevolution.

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