Mutation bias interacts with composition bias to influence adaptive evolution
Fig 5
Evolving polymorphic populations are more sensitive to changes in mutation bias than to the stochastic nature of the evolutionary simulations.
(a) Schematic figure of our experimental design. For each landscape and combination of population size and mutation rate (Nμ), we considered 10 replicates for each of 10 different initial conditions and 19 values of the mutation bias parameter α. Importantly, we used the replicate number to seed the random number generator of each evolutionary simulation, facilitating the comparison of variation across replicates versus across the mutation bias parameter α. For example, the matrix elements indicated in gray contain the information necessary to compare the effects of the mutation bias parameter with the stochasticity of the evolutionary simulations, for one initial condition. (b) Overlap coefficient for pairs of evolved populations that differ in random number generator seed (“Replicates”) or in mutation bias parameter (“Mutation bias”). Notches indicate medians, whiskers indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles, and cross symbols indicate outliers. (c) Overlap coefficient for pairs of evolved populations, shown in relation to the difference in their mutation bias parameters.