Geometric speed limit for acceleration by natural selection in evolutionary processes

Abstract

We derived a new speed limit in population dynamics, which is a fundamental limit on the evolutionary rate. By splitting the contributions of selection and mutation to the evolutionary rate, we obtained the new bound on the speed of arbitrary observables, named the selection bound, that can be tighter than the conventional Cramér-Rao bound. Remarkably, the selection bound can be much tighter if the contribution of selection is more dominant than that of mutation. This tightness can be geometrically characterized by the correlation between the observable of interest and the growth rate. We also numerically illustrate the effectiveness of the selection bound in the transient dynamics of evolutionary processes and discuss how to test our speed limit experimentally.