Evolving phylogenies of trait-dependent branching with mutation and competition. Part I: Existence

Abstract: We propose a type-dependent branching model with mutation and competition for modeling phylogenies of a virus population. The competition kernel depends for any two virus particles on the particles' types, the total mass of the population as well as genetic information available through the number of nucleotide substitutions separating the virus particles. We consider the evolving phylogenies of this individual based model in the huge population, short reproduction time and frequent mutation regime, and show tightness in the state space of marked metric measure spaces. Due to heterogeneity in the natural branching rates, the phylogenies are in general not ultra-metric. We therefore develop new techniques for verifying a compact containment condition. Finally, we characterize the limit as a solution of a martingale problem.