Imperial College London

ProfessorArmandLeroi

Faculty of Natural SciencesDepartment of Life Sciences

Professor of Evolutionary Developmental Biology
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 2396a.leroi Website

 
 
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Location

 

Sir Alexander Fleming BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Leroi:2020:10.1038/s41562-020-0844-7,
author = {Leroi, AM and Ben, L and Rosindell, J and Zhang, X and Kokkoris, GD},
doi = {10.1038/s41562-020-0844-7},
journal = {Nature Human Behaviour},
pages = {780--790},
title = {Neutral syndrome},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0844-7},
volume = {4},
year = {2020}
}

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB - Neutral models of evolution assume the absence of natural selection. Formerly confined to ecology and evolutionary biology, neutral models are spreading. In recent years they’ve been applied to explaining the diversity of baby names, scientific citations, cryptocurrencies, pot decorations, literary lexica, tumour variants and much more besides. Here, we survey important neutral models and highlight their similarities. We investigate the most widely used tests of neutrality, show that they are weak and suggest more powerful methods. We conclude by discussing the role of neutral models in the explanation of diversity. We suggest that the ability of neutral models to fit low-information distributions should not be taken as evidence for the absence of selection. Nevertheless, many studies, in increasingly diverse fields, make just such claims. We call this tendency ‘neutral syndrome’.
AU - Leroi,AM
AU - Ben,L
AU - Rosindell,J
AU - Zhang,X
AU - Kokkoris,GD
DO - 10.1038/s41562-020-0844-7
EP - 790
PY - 2020///
SN - 2397-3374
SP - 780
TI - Neutral syndrome
T2 - Nature Human Behaviour
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0844-7
UR - http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000531920100003&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0844-7
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/80731
VL - 4
ER -