How to translate text using browser tools
1 March 2007 EFFECTS OF POPULATION SIZE AND MUTATION RATE ON THE EVOLUTION OF MUTATIONAL ROBUSTNESS
Santiago F. Elena, Claus O. Wilke, Charles Ofria, Richard E. Lenski
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

It is often assumed that the efficiency of selection for mutational robustness would be proportional to mutation rate and population size, thus being inefficient in small populations. However, Krakauer and Plotkin (2002) hypothesized that selection in small populations would favor robustness mechanisms, such as redundancy, that mask the effect of deleterious mutations. In large populations, by contrast, selection is more effective at removing deleterious mutants and fitness would be improved by eliminating mechanisms that mask the effect of deleterious mutations and thus impede their removal. Here, we test whether these predictions are supported in experiments with evolving populations of digital organisms. Digital organisms are self-replicating programs that inhabit a virtual world inside a computer. Like their organic counterparts, digital organisms mutate, compete, evolve, and adapt by natural selection to their environment. In this study, 160 populations evolved at different combinations of mutation rate and population size. After 104 generations, we measured the mutational robustness of the most abundant genotype in each population. Mutational robustness tended to increase with mutation rate and to decline with population size, although the dependence with population size was in part mediated by a negative relationship between fitness and robustness. These results are independent of whether genomes were constrained to their original length or allowed to change in size.

Santiago F. Elena, Claus O. Wilke, Charles Ofria, and Richard E. Lenski "EFFECTS OF POPULATION SIZE AND MUTATION RATE ON THE EVOLUTION OF MUTATIONAL ROBUSTNESS," Evolution 61(3), 666-674, (1 March 2007). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2007.00064.x
Received: 17 October 2006; Accepted: 16 November 2006; Published: 1 March 2007
JOURNAL ARTICLE
9 PAGES

This article is only available to subscribers.
It is not available for individual sale.
+ SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

KEYWORDS
Deleterious mutations
digital organisms
fitness landscapes
mutational robustness
neutral networks
population size
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission
Back to Top