Biology subjects

Sumpter, D. J. T.

Publications and source records attributed to Sumpter, D. J. T..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Rapid evolution of coordinated and collective movement in response to artificial selection

Collective motion occurs when individuals use social interaction rules to respond to the movements and positions of their neighbors. How readily these social decisions are shaped by selection remains unknown. Through artificial selection on fish (guppies, Poecilia reticulata) for increased social coordination (group polarization), we demonstrate that social interaction rules can evolve remarkably fast. Within just three generations, groups of polarization selected females showed a 15% increase in polarization, coupled with increased cohesiveness, compared to fish from control lines. They did not differ in physical swimming ability or exploratory behavior. However, polarization selected fish adopted faster speeds, particularly in social contexts, and showed stronger alignment and attraction responses to multiple neighbors. Our results demonstrate that animals social interactions can rapidly evolve under strong selection, and reveal which social interaction rules change when collective behavior evolves.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Spontaneous emergence of self-replication in chemical reaction systems

Explaining origins of life requires us to explain how self-replication arises. Specifically, how can self-replicating entities develop spontaneously from chemical reaction systems in which no reaction is self-replicating? Previous models either supply a framework for minimal living systems or only consider catalyzed reactions, and thus fail to provide a comprehensive theory. We establish a general model for chemical reaction systems that properly accounts for energetics, kinetics and conservation laws. We find that (1) some systems are collectively-catalytic (e.g., the citric acid cycle), while others self-replicate as a whole (e.g., the formose reaction); (2) side reactions do not always inhibit such systems; (3) many alternative chemical universes often contain one or more such systems; (4) in some self-replicating systems, the entropy of certain parts spontaneously decreases; (5) complex self-replicating molecules emerge spontaneously from simple reaction systems through a sequence of transitions. Together these results start to explain origins of prebiotic evolution.

biochemistry↗