Population subdivision with migration can facilitate evolution on rugged fitness landscapes
Anne-Florence Bitbol, David J. Schwab
(Submitted on 1 Aug 2013)

We show that subdivision of an asexual population into demes connected by migration significantly accelerates the crossing of fitness valleys and plateaus over a wide parameter range, both with respect to the non-subdivided population and with respect to a single deme. We predict the existence of a parameter range where valley or plateau crossing by the metapopulation is as fast as that of the fastest deme, and we verify this prediction using stochastic simulations. Finally, we extend our work to the case of a large population connected by migration to one or several smaller islands.