R. Hermsen

Multiscale selection in spatially structured populations

This paper introduces a mathematical framework to quantify natural selection across spatial scales in structured populations, showing how local and interlocal selection can oppose each other.

Emergent multilevel selection in a simple spatial model of the evolution of altruism

This paper presents a spatial model showing altruism can persist through colony-level selection, where altruistic colonies outcompete defector colonies despite within-colony defection.

Abundant proteins contribute strongly to noise in the growth rate of optimally growing bacteria

The paper challenges the intuition that low-abundance proteins drive growth rate noise by showing highly abundant proteins contribute more due to their higher sensitivity in optimally growing bacteria.

How repeated outbreaks drive the evolution of bacteriophage communication: Insights from a mathematical model

The paper develops a mathematical model showing that phage communication strategies evolve in response to repeated outbreaks, favoring a switch from lytic to lysogenic cycles when susceptible hosts are scarce.

The naive T-cell receptor repertoire has an extremely broad distribution of clone sizes

The paper estimates the distribution of clone sizes in the human naive T-cell receptor repertoire and finds that while most clones are small, some large clones exist due to peripheral selection.