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abstract: 'Natural selection and random drift are competing phenomena for explaining the evolution of populations. Combining a highly fit mutant with a population structure that improves the odds that the mutant spreads through the whole population tips the balance in favor of natural selection. The probability that the spread occurs, known as the fixation probability, depends heavily on how the population is structured. Certain topologies, albeit highly artificially contrived, have been shown to exist that favor fixation. We introduce a randomized mechanism for network growth that is loosely inspired in some of these topologies’ key properties and demonstrate, through simulations, that it is capable of giving rise to structured populations for which the fixation probability significantly surpasses that of an unstructured population. This discovery provides important support to the notion that natural selection can be enhanced over random drift in naturally occurring population structures.'
author:
- 'Valmir C. Barbosa'
- Raul Donangelo
- 'Sergio R. Souza'
bibliography:
- 'fixprob.bib'
title: Network growth for enhanced natural selection
---

Networks of agents that interact with one another underlie several important phenomena, including the spread of epidemics through populations [@bbpv04], the emergence of cooperation in biological and social systems [@sp05; @ohln06; @tdw07], the dynamics of evolution [@m58; @lhn05], and various others [@gh05; @sf07]. Typically, the dynamics of such interactions involves the propagation of information through the network as the agents contend to spread their influence and alter the states of other agents. In this letter, we focus on the dynamics of evolving populations, particularly on how network structure relates to the ability of a mutation to take over the entire network by spreading from its nod