Arsene is on a trajectory of exponential decay, getting closer and closer each year but that in such a manner that it is clear that he's never actually going to ever get there.
Of course, for particular fossils the individual decay trajectories of animals decaying in specific depositional environments will vary; our experiments are designed to establishing the sequence of character loss without any other confounding variables.
(Onychophoran decay is summarized in Table 1 and Figures 1, 2 and 3. Details of the decay trajectory of each character examined are provided in Additional files 3, 4, 5 and 6).
The governing trajectory was not of progress but of decay.
Although the degree of decay is different, the general trajectories are the same for both sets of experiments.
The half-lives are calculated by taking into account the penetration probabilities through the potential barrier along disintegration trajectories in the deformation space appropriate to each kind of decay.
We developed a discrete-generation stochastic model to simulate the potential trajectories of fsRIDL allele decay under situations analogous to our experimental populations (population size of 200, initial fsRIDL allele frequency of 0.25, restrictive conditions).
The trajectory for mean fitness as random mutations accumulate is generally one of decay because many more mutations are deleterious than are beneficial.
Most exhibit approximately linear decay trajectories against the log sampling scale, but there are significant differences in slopes (i.e. rate of decay; F =2.65, df =4, p =0.042), with the internal organs decaying faster and following a separate trajectory to all other characters.
That is, one might be tempted to think that EH can equally be characterized as a hierarchy of increasing rates of decay of correlations: a K-system, for instance, which exhibits exponential divergence of trajectories would be characterized by an exponential rate of decay of correlations, while a SM-system would exhibit a polynomial rate of decay.
Exogenous boosting is assumed to increase VZV-CMI temporary, after which decay towards 'the original trajectory of VZV-CMI' is assumed to occur.
