Jeffrey R Chasnov

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | UST · Department of Mathematics

Although the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans reproduces primarily as a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite, males are maintained in natural populations at low frequency. In this commentary, I discuss the evolutionary forces that maintain males and the role males might play in this mating system.

A fast algorithm for computing multi-locus recombination is extended to include a recombination-modifier locus. This algorithm and a linear stability analysis is used to investigate the evolution of recombination rates in a multi-locus, haploid-selection, symmetric-viability model for which stable equilibria have recently been determined. When the...

Under haploid selection, a multi-locus, diallelic, two-niche Levene (1953) model is studied. Viability coefficients with symmetrically opposing directional selection in each niche are assumed, and with a further simplification that the most and least favored haplotype in each niche shares no alleles in common, and that the selection coefficients mo...

A recent study suggests that postdauer Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites produce more self-sperm and have larger brood sizes than worms that bypass diapause. Why might natural selection favor increased self-sperm production in postdauer hermaphrodites? This question is addressed by developing an age-structured model for an exponentially growing...

The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans and the clam shrimp Eulimnadia texana are two well-studied androdioecious species consisting mostly of self-fertilizing hermaphrodites and few males. To understand how androdioecy can evolve, a simple two-step mathematical model of the evolutionary pathway from a male-female species to a selfing-hermaphrodit...

A fast algorithm for computing recombination is developed for model organisms with selection on haploids. Haplotype frequencies are transformed to marginal frequencies; random mating and recombination are computed; marginal frequencies are transformed back to haplotype frequencies. With L diallelic loci, this algorithm is theoretically a factor of...

Four species in the ELEGANS group of subgenus the Caenorhabditis are distinguished by two very different mating systems: androdioecy in C. elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae with males and self-fertilizing hermaphrodites and dioecy in Caenorhabditis remanei and Caenorhabditis sp. strain CB5161 with males and females. Using chemotaxis assays, we de...

The free-living nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans reproduces primarily as a self-fertilizing hermaphrodite, yet males are maintained in wild-type populations at low frequency. To determine the role of males in C. elegans, we develop a mathematical model for the genetic system of hermaphrodites that can either self-fertilize or be fertilized by m...

The evolutionary maintenance of sexual reproduction remains a controversial problem. It was recently shown that recessive deleterious mutations create differences in the mutation load of sexual vs. asexual populations. Here we show that low levels of population structure or inbreeding can greatly enhance the importance of recessive deleterious muta...

An infinite fluid with a vertical cubic temperature profile in the absence of fluid motion is considered as a model for penetrative convection in which a central unstably stratified fluid layer is bounded above and below by stably stratified layers. Turbulence statistics from direct and large eddy numerical simulations for the mean temperature grad...

A leading hypothesis for the evolutionary function of sex postulates that sex is an adaptation that purges deleterious mutations from the genome, thereby increasing the equilibrium mean fitness of a sexual population relative to its asexual competitor. This hypothesis requires two necessary conditions: first, the mutation rate per genome must be of...

A leading hypothesis for the evolutionary function of sex postulates that sex is an adaptation that purges deleterious mutations from the genome, thereby increasing the equilibrium mean fitness of a sexual population relative to its asexual competitor. This hypothesis requires two necessary conditions: first, the mutation rate per genome must be of...

this paper is to develop a pseudospectral method to study penetrative convection in a domain which is infinite in the vertical direction. Although the closely related Rayleigh Bernard problem has received more attention than penetrative convection, there are an increasing number of reports on this problem [1, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17]. The obvious re...

We examine the consequences of self-similarity of energy spectrum of two-dimensional decaying turbulence, and conclude that traditional closures (such as EDQNM and test field models (TFM)) are consistent with this principle only if the regions of space contributing significantly to energy and enstrophy transfer comprise an ever diminishing region o...

Recent numerical simulations [2] of decaying two-dimensional homogeneous turbulence at high Reynolds numbers have exhibited an approximate self-similar evolution of the energy spectrum. We analyze here the theoretical implications of self-similarity.

The decay of high-Reynolds-number inhomogeneous turbulence in an unbounded domain is considered. The turbulence may be initially localized in one to three spatial directions and the fluid is assumed to be at rest at infinity in those directions. Previous arguments used to determine the decay laws of homogeneous turbulence are extended to...

Direct numerical simulations of decaying two‐dimensional turbulence in a fluid of large extent are performed primarily to ascertain the asymptotic decay laws of the energy and enstrophy. It is determined that a critical Reynolds number Rc exists such that for initial Reynolds numbers with R(0)<Rc final period of decay solutions result, whereas for...

The decay of statistically homogeneous velocity and density fluctuations in a stably stratified fluid is considered. Over decay times long compared with the turbulence time scale but short compared with the period of internal gravity waves, three distinct high Reynolds number similarity states may develop. These similarity states are a consequence...

The decay of a homogeneous turbulence generated by an axisymmetric distribution of random impulsive forces acting at the initial instant is studied by means of large-eddy simulations. The impulsive forces may be either parallel or perpendicular to the symmetry axis. For impulsive forces, which result in a k4 low wave number energy spectrum of the t...

The long-time, asymptotic state of rotating homogeneous turbulence at high Reynolds numbers has been examined using large-eddy simulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The simulations were carried out using 128 x 128 x 512 collocation points in a computational domain that is four times longer along the rotation axis than in the oth...

Study of turbulent flows in rotating reference frames has long been an area of considerable scientific and engineering interest. Because of its importance, the subject of turbulence in rotating reference frames has motivated over the years a large number of theoretical, experimental, and computational studies. The bulk of these previous works has s...

We present evidence of similarity states which may develop inhomogeneous stably-stratified flows if a dimensionless group in addition to the Reynolds number, the so-called Froude number, is sufficiently large. Here, we define the Froude number as the ratio of the internal wave time-scale to the turbulence time-scale. We examine three different simi...

The inertial-conductive subrange spectrum of a passive temperature field of a fluid of small Prandtl number is determined by large-eddy simulation. Results for simulations of both freely decaying and forced turbulence are presented. In the simulations of freely decaying turbulence, a subgrid model is used to simulate a decaying turbulent velocity f...

A subgrid model is developed and applied to a large-eddy simulation of the Kolmogorov inertial subrange. Currently popular subgrid models are derived from models of the turbulent energy equation, resulting in a significant loss of information as a consequence of the statistical averaging performed in going from the Navier-Stokes equation to the ene...