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Figure 3 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Figure 3

From: The impact of random frequency-dependent mutations on the average population fitness

Figure 3

Changes in the average fitness when a population evolves between different levels of diversity under various probabilities that a mutant payoff values is larger than the parent’s θ . The symbols are simulation results based on replicator dynamics. The number of different types can either stay the same, increase by one or decrease by any number, because at most a single mutation enters the population. Note that the average fitness of the population in the new equilibrium decreases for small θ in all three cases after a transition. Thus even if a mutant takes over a population, the average fitness can decrease. With increasing θ, the average fitness will increase over time, but the fitness gain reduces with increasing diversity. The difference among results under Gaussian distribution and uniform distribution with the same variance, shows that the absolute changes of the average fitness also depends the concrete shapes of the probability distribution (every symbol is averaged over 500 independent realizations and 20000 mutations per realization. The probability distribution f(x) is Gaussian (left) or uniform (right) with variance 1).

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