Lost in translation? – Caveat to the application of the voter model in ecology and evolutionary biology

Abstract

The voter model is a paradigmatic model of competition between alternative states within groups. Its properties have been intensively studied in statistical physics. Due to its generality, the model lends itself to various applications in ecology and evolutionary biology. I briefly review these opportunities, but call attention to a frequently occurring misinterpretation: it is often assumed that the agents in the model represent individual organisms. I argue that this assumption only holds under very specific conditions, and thus the meaning of the agents is often ‘lost in translation’ between physics and biology. Instead of an individual-based view, I propose that an alternative, site-based approach is more plausible. I suggest that the biological applicability of the model could further be broadened by considering the transitional states of the agents (sites) explicitly and letting the network evolve according to the agents’ states.