Category: Pop. Genetics

Summary: Testing whether a reversible dormant seed bank raises the recombination level needed to delocalize a modular quasispecies.

Recombination can spread a quasispecies across genotype space, while dormancy can preserve localized structure by storing genetic material away from immediate reshuffling. This experiment asks whether coupling every active genotype to a dormant counterpart pushes the recombination-delocalization threshold above the baseline without a seed bank.

The script builds a dense symmetric operator that includes active and dormant blocks, then bisects recombination strength while increasing the active-state size through iterative deepening. Because the full operator doubles the active dimension, the calculation targets a regime that benefits from distributed compute.

The scientific value lies in combining recombination and dormancy in one threshold problem. Rather than treating seed banks as a separate demographic detail, the experiment measures whether they directly buffer modular genetic organization against recombination.

Method: Dense symmetric eigensolve of a coupled active-dormant operator with iterative deepening and bisection on recombination strength.

What is measured: Critical recombination threshold, localization of the modular quasispecies, dormant-mass effects, and bracket width.