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Public Library of Science, PLoS Biology, 12(12), p. e1002017, 2014

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002017

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Not Just a Theory—The Utility of Mathematical Models in Evolutionary Biology

Journal article published in 2014 by Maria R. Servedio ORCID, Yaniv Brandvain ORCID, Sumit Dhole, Courtney L. Fitzpatrick, Emma E. Goldberg, Caitlin A. Stern, Jeremy Van Cleve, D. Justin Yeh, D. Justin Yeh
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Progress in science often begins with verbal hypotheses meant to explain why certain biological phenomena exist. An important purpose of mathematical models in evolutionary research, as in many other fields, is to act as “proof-of-concept” tests of the logic in verbal explanations, paralleling the way in which empirical data are used to test hypotheses. Because not all subfields of biology use mathematics for this purpose, misunderstandings of the function of proof-of-concept modeling are common. In the hope of facilitating communication, we discuss the role of proof-of-concept modeling in evolutionary biology.