Natural Selection as a Percolation System

Abstract

The role of natural selection in biological evolution, which reflects contemporary biological concepts, is described systematically. A new approach based on the ideas regarding the physical phenomenon of percolation is suggested and developed to generalize the theoretical and mathematical description of this key problem of biology. The natural selection of optimal variants in the evolutionary mutation flow is considered as a percolation filter, a physical tool constituting the selection mechanism. The model is based on the concept of self-organization in hierarchical speciation structures, where trigger properties of a cell (node) as a valve define the deterministic component of fixing new mutations, and the drift defines the collective behavior of the percolation lattice nodes and connections (mutations) that introduces an element of randomness to the process of fixing new mutations in mutation flows. As a result of considering various values of the selection and drift coefficients, as well as the ratio of prohibiting and permitting mutations, the modes of fixing mutations in generations were obtained at the population level.