Acta Biotheoretica最新文献

Assessing the Impact of Routine and Campaign Vaccination on Measles Transmission: A Modeling Study 评估常规和运动疫苗接种对麻疹传播的影响：一项模型研究。

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-10-15 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09507-2

Kelly Joëlle Gatore Sinigirira, Olumuyiwa James Peter, Ghaniyyat Bolanle Balogun, Gbolahan Bolarin

{"title":"Assessing the Impact of Routine and Campaign Vaccination on Measles Transmission: A Modeling Study","authors":"Kelly Joëlle Gatore Sinigirira, Olumuyiwa James Peter, Ghaniyyat Bolanle Balogun, Gbolahan Bolarin","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09507-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09507-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Measles remains a major global public health challenge despite available vaccines. To evaluate the combined impact of routine immunization and supplementary vaccination campaigns, we developed a compartmental mathematical model that incorporates declining immunity and breakthrough infections. We derived the control reproduction number using the next-generation matrix method, analyzed stability and bifurcation properties of the equilibria, and conducted sensitivity analysis to determine key drivers of transmission. The model was parameterized from the literature and calibrated to 2024 Nigerian measles case data using Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. The model revealed that the disease-free equilibrium is globally stable when the control reproduction number is less than one, but a backward bifurcation indicates that reducing the reproduction number below unity may not suffice for elimination. Sensitivity analysis identified the transmission rate among vaccinated individuals, breakthrough infections, and waning immunity as dominant drivers of transmission. Simulations demonstrated that while routine vaccination delays and reduces outbreak peaks, it does not interrupt transmission alone; annual campaigns outperform biennial strategies, preventing 40% more cases; and combined vaccination reduces the reproduction number below unity while preventing 65-80% of infections versus no vaccination. Critically, temporary disruptions in routine coverage significantly increase outbreak risk, and maintaining vaccine efficacy above 90% alongside hospitalization of at least 50% of infectious individuals is essential for containment. These results underscore that high-coverage routine vaccination must be integrated with periodic high-intensity campaigns and robust clinical care to close immunity gaps, mitigate waning protection, and accelerate measles elimination.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145290689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Reciprocal Causation and Statistical Reciprocity 互惠因果关系和统计互惠。

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-09-25 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09506-3

Tiago Rama

{"title":"Reciprocal Causation and Statistical Reciprocity","authors":"Tiago Rama","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09506-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09506-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Ernst Mayr famously distinguished between proximate and ultimate causal explanations. His view was decisive in the fact that development was not included in the theory of evolution. Nevertheless, the explanatory role of developmental processes in evolution is a central theme of current theoretical biology, which has led to several revisions of Mayr’s distinction. One of the reasons for this is that the interactions between organisms and the environment influence evolution. This is a cornerstone of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. How are these reciprocal interactions integrated into evolutionary theory? I will argue that this question can sometimes be answered by adopting an interactivist view based on a <i>reinterpretation</i> of reciprocal causation: developmental processes (such as niche construction or developmental plasticity) interact reciprocally with natural selection to produce evolved traits. In the following, I will critically analyze Mayr’s critics to determine whether the integration of development and evolution based on the reinterpretation of reciprocal causation is an appropriate alternative. I will argue that this is not the case, since this interactivist framework raises several explanatory problems. Instead, I should reconsider Mayr’s distinction by adopting an alternative view of evolutionary causation, known as the statisticalist view of natural selection, which posits that the only level of causation is the individual level and that ultimate explanations are statistical in nature. I argue that this framework avoids the explanatory problems identified earlier. To explore the relationship between organisms–environment reciprocal causation and ultimate explanations, I introduce the concept of ‘statistical reciprocity’ to measure the statistical effects of reciprocal causation in population changes. I situate this proposal within a general framework I call ‘population ontogenetics’, which is seen as an attempt to unify development and evolution beyond interactivist positions.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145136045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Why and How to Use Process Philosophy in Everyday Ecology and Biology? 为什么以及如何在日常生态学和生物学中使用过程哲学？

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-09-10 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09504-5

Cédric Gaucherel

{"title":"Why and How to Use Process Philosophy in Everyday Ecology and Biology?","authors":"Cédric Gaucherel","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09504-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09504-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Recent studies in biology and ecology show striking convergences with process philosophy (PP). Biologists today are debating the real nature of evolution and of life itself, which is increasingly considered as a set of interrelated processes rather than a set of tangible species and material lineages. This perspective of focusing on changes can also be found with ecologists and environmental ethicists, whose studies feed into as well as draw on PP principles. Despite such connections, the PP-based approach has not yet been adopted in ecology or biology, and appears to be rarely <i>used</i> in practice. We face a problem: How to transform PP from an epistemological pillar into a useful ontological pillar in ecology and further on in biology? To answer, we developed here simple qualitative, discrete-event ecosystem models based on a process network representation instead of on a more tangible interaction network. Comparing rigorous models developed with a traditional materialist view, like those commonly used in ecology, with models built here on a PP-based view, provides a first illustration of the way PP could be concretely applied in and could benefit to ecology and biology, by directly handling processes. Hence, <i>putting PP into practice</i> suggests handling processes first, and then only deducing objects lasting in time and composing the system under study. We also show with examples that following PP principles may sometimes lead to different conclusions, despite handling the same material components of the system under study. Additionally, PP sheds new light on the age-old pattern/process debate and on some others in biology and ecology.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145028397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Conformal Patterns in the Growth of Human Skulls 人类头骨生长的适形模式

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-08-21 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09503-6

M. Y. Tufail, S. Gul

引用次数: 0

Assessment of the Efficiency of Vaccination and Short-term Isolation in Lowering the Disease Load in Koalas Population 疫苗接种和短期隔离对降低考拉种群疾病负荷的效果评价

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-08-12 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09501-8

Parimita Roy, Sanjoli Jain, Ranjit Kumar Upadhyay, Ani Jain

{"title":"Assessment of the Efficiency of Vaccination and Short-term Isolation in Lowering the Disease Load in Koalas Population","authors":"Parimita Roy, Sanjoli Jain, Ranjit Kumar Upadhyay, Ani Jain","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09501-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09501-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Koala populations in some regions of eastern Australia are in critical condition. Our research aims to develop effective conservation strategies for these declining koalas threatened by chlamydia infection, predation, and climate change. To achieve this, we developed a mathematical model that includes populations of dingoes and koalas categorized as susceptible, infected, and confined. We conducted a bifurcation analysis within the ordinary differential equations (ODE) model to explore the occurrence of a Hopf bifurcation. This analysis aimed to identify conditions under which the system undergoes qualitative changes in its dynamics, specifically transitions from stable equilibrium points to periodic oscillations. By examining how the system’s behavior shifts as parameters are varied, we could determine the thresholds at which these bifurcations occur, providing insights into the potential for oscillatory patterns in koala populations and disease dynamics. Additionally, we performed a global sensitivity analysis using the partial rank correlation coefficient (PRCC) method. This approach helped us evaluate the relative importance of different parameters on disease prevalence and koala mortality. Extensive numerical simulations allowed us to compare the outcomes of deterministic, stochastic, and diffusive models. Our research indicates that the survival of koala populations is significantly influenced by several key factors: the presence of dingoes, vaccination efforts, and temporary quarantining. Simulations of spatially explicit systems show that increased diffusion among dingoes leads to a more significant clustering of the infected koala population. Our study offers theoretical evidence that vaccination and temporary isolation strategies can significantly improve health outcomes for koalas infected with Chlamydia.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

A Genus Comparison in the Topological Analysis of RNA Structures RNA结构拓扑分析中的属比较。

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-08-01 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09500-9

Nicolò Cangiotti, Stefano Grasso

{"title":"A Genus Comparison in the Topological Analysis of RNA Structures","authors":"Nicolò Cangiotti, Stefano Grasso","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09500-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09500-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>While RNA folding prediction remains challenging, even with machine and deep learning methods, it can also be approached from a topological mathematics perspective. The purpose of the present paper is to elucidate this problem for students and researchers in both the mathematical physics and biology fields, fostering interest in developing novel theoretical and applied solutions that could propel RNA research forward. With this intention, the mathematical method, based on matrix field theory, to compute the topological classification of RNA structures is reviewed. Similarly, McGenus, a computational software that exploits matrix field theory for topological and folding predictions, is examined. To further illustrate the outcomes of this mathematical approach, two types of analyses are performed: the prediction results from McGenus are compared with topological information extracted from experimentally-determined RNA structures, and the topology of RNA structures is investigated for biological significance, both in evolutionary and functional terms. Lastly, we advocate for more research efforts to be conducted at the intersection between physics, mathematics and biology, with a particular focus on the potential contributions that topology can make to the study of RNA folding and structure.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12316799/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144758883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Modelling Bacterial Growth and Oxygen Consumption in Aqueous Suspensions of Escherichia coli 模拟大肠杆菌水悬浮液中的细菌生长和耗氧量。

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-07-29 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09502-7

Boleslovas Dapkūnas, Romas Baronas, Remigijus Šimkus

{"title":"Modelling Bacterial Growth and Oxygen Consumption in Aqueous Suspensions of Escherichia coli","authors":"Boleslovas Dapkūnas, Romas Baronas, Remigijus Šimkus","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09502-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09502-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper deals with the computational modelling of the bioluminescence pattern formation in suspensions of luminous <i>Escherichia coli</i> bacteria. The aim of this work is to improve the reaction–diffusion–chemotaxis model by introducing modulation functions applied to the rates of the bacterial growth, the chemoattractant production and the oxygen consumption as well as to investigate the influence of the function form on the spatiotemporal pattern formation in an <i>E. coli</i> colony. The nonlinear two-dimensional-in-space model was used to simulate the pattern formation in aqueous cultures of bacteria along the inner lateral surface and along the three-phase contact line of a cylindrical micro-container. The simulated patterns are analysed in order to determine the form of the modulation functions and values of the model parameters closely matching patterns experimentally observed in a luminous <i>E. coli</i> colony. A linear stability analysis of the corresponding one-dimensional-in-space model is applied to determine values of the parameters triggering the self-organisation of the bacterial colony. The numerical simulation at the transient conditions was carried out using the finite difference technique.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144740818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Nonlinear Analysis of Incidence Time Series of COVID-19 Reveals Unprecedented Unpredictability 2019冠状病毒病发病时间序列非线性分析揭示前所未有的不可预测性

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-07-23 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09499-z

Mauricio Canals, Alejandro Maass, Javier Monreal

{"title":"Nonlinear Analysis of Incidence Time Series of COVID-19 Reveals Unprecedented Unpredictability","authors":"Mauricio Canals, Alejandro Maass, Javier Monreal","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09499-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09499-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The dynamics of directly transmitted infectious diseases may be chaotic or have high degrees of unpredictability, making it difficult to assess the long-term evolution. Chaotic dynamics has been observed in several infectious diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic might follow nonlinear and chaotic dynamics, explaining its low predictability. We study the unpredictability of the dynamics generated by COVID-19 2020-22 pandemic in a sample of eleven countries that have generated very good quality data according to WHO reports. We compute the Maximum Lyapunov Exponent (MLE) profile in moving windows of 250 days along the epidemic for the series of the incidence of reported cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The MLE profile for incidence of reported cases reveals that, regardless of local measures to mitigate the virus, this exponent becomes extremely high (above 0,4 Bits/month on average), close to one order of magnitude above the values previously reported for other infectious diseases. When evaluating the evolution of the MLEs profiles, after a transient that is country dependent, this index becomes very stable and similar in clusters of countries somehow independently of their own sanitary measures. In periods of strong pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions, the MLE values were reduced probably due to the restriction of the degrees of freedom of the trajectories, recovering in a very short period the pandemic values when the interventions decreased. This behavior suggests a highly chaotic type of dynamics that requires a fine synchronization of classical epidemiological measures with the processes of vaccination and immunity gain.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144688585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Population Thinking and the Uniqueness of Biological Entities 种群思维与生物实体的独特性。

IF 1.5 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-06-13 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09498-0

Daniel J. Nicholson

{"title":"Population Thinking and the Uniqueness of Biological Entities","authors":"Daniel J. Nicholson","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09498-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09498-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The concept of ‘population thinking’ was introduced by Ernst Mayr in the mid-twentieth century and it has since become one of the most pervasive notions in the philosophy of biology. Despite its influence, however, the term has been widely misunderstood, even by those who have done the most to champion it. Population thinking today is often confused with population-level thinking (i.e., the idea of treating populations as units of analysis), which, ironically, is the opposite of what Mayr intended to convey when he coined the term. For Mayr, population thinking was a way of emphasizing the variation among individuals in a population, as well as the importance of recognizing their differences and uniqueness. In this paper, I recover the original meaning of ‘population thinking’ and elucidate its central role in evolutionary theory. I also demonstrate its surprising relevance to many other areas of contemporary biology. In particular, I show how the recent introduction of novel methodologies in molecular biology has led to a number of unexpected discoveries that are best understood through the lens of population thinking. Finally, I examine the historical origins and philosophical foundations of population thinking, and I show how it lies at the heart of what makes biology different from physics.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12166029/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144281953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Mathematical Modelling of Disability Progression in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis 多发性硬化症患者残疾进展的数学模型

IF 1.4 4区生物学

Acta Biotheoretica Pub Date : 2025-05-21 DOI: 10.1007/s10441-025-09497-1

Georgi Bazlyankov, Tihomir Ivanov

{"title":"Mathematical Modelling of Disability Progression in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis","authors":"Georgi Bazlyankov, Tihomir Ivanov","doi":"10.1007/s10441-025-09497-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10441-025-09497-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The tools of mathematical modelling offer promising possibilities in our attempts to deepen our knowledge of insufficiently well-understood diseases such as multiple sclerosis. In this article we formulate a mathematical model, mainly based on differential equations, while gradually incorporating the needed modifications to the model with the aim of more accurately simulating the typical qualitative behaviours of the different types of MS. The agents active in the disease process are grouped in two main categories—beneficial cells and harmful cells, based on their influence on the nervous system. In this text a deterministic as well as a stochastic model are proposed, with the goal of the stochastic model being a better representation of the observed irregularities in the occurrence of relapses and remissions in MS. The dynamics of the cell types’ concentrations are modelled through the utilization of appropriate periodic functions. The analytical properties of the models are studied and the connection between parameter values, initial conditions and end results is utilized to produce models capable of simulating disease courses with quantitative characteristics in accordance with real-world clinical data.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7057,"journal":{"name":"Acta Biotheoretica","volume":"73 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144108489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0