Scholars' Mine Doctoral Dissertations Student Theses and Dissertations Fall 2015 Evolutionary dynamics of speciation and extinction Dawn Michelle King Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations Part of the Biophysics Commons Department: Physics Recommended Citation King, Dawn Michelle, "Evolutionary dynamics of speciation and extinction" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 2464. https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/doctoral_dissertations/2464 This thesis is brought to you by Scholars' Mine, a service of the Missouri S&T Library and Learning Resources. This work is protected by U. S. Copyright Law. Unauthorized use including reproduction for redistribution requires the permission of the copyright holder. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 1 EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS OF SPECIATION AND EXTINCTION by DAWN MICHELLE KING A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate Faculty of the MISSOURI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY and UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT SAINT LOUIS In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in PHYSICS 2015 Approved by: Sonya Bahar, Advisor Ricardo Flores Nevena Marić Paul Parris Thomas Vojta 1 iii ABSTRACT Presented here is an interdisciplinary study that draws connections between the fields of physics, mathematics, and evolutionary biology. Importantly, as we move through the Anthropocene Epoch, where human-driven climate change threatens biodiversity, understanding how an evolving population responds to extinction stress could be key to saving endangered ecosystems. With a neutral, agent-based model that incorporates the main principles of Darwinian evolution, such as heritability, variability, and competition, the dynamics of speciation and extinction is investigated. The simulated organisms evolve according to the reaction-diffusion rules of the 2D directed percolation universality class.