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Fig. 3 | Biology Direct

Fig. 3

From: Adaptive multiscapes: an up-to-date metaphor to visualize molecular adaptation

Fig. 3

Population dynamics on adaptive multiscapes. The high degree of mutual accessibility of phenotypes is illustrated as an almost completely connected network where phenotypes are represented as circles with a surface proportional to the phenotype size. As depicted in the yellow phenotype, there is a complex, networked internal structure of genotypes, and molecular populations move on that network, though they occupy a tiny fraction of all possible genotypes. Therefore, there is a waiting time (stasis) before a fitter phenotype is found and fixed (punctuation). The grey curve illustrates the movement of a population within one phenotype. Different possible adaptive trajectories among phenotypes are depicted through colored links. Note that though the red phenotype can in principle be attained through fixation of an appropriate sequence of mutations, the time spent in the yellow phenotype might be, in practice, much longer than that required to find the red one

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