Before revision:  The optimal receptor distribution depends on natural odor statistics, implying that a change in environment should lead to changes in receptor abundances. The effect is more pronounced when olfactory receptors respond strongly to a smaller number of odors. Our model also predicts that, between closely-related species, those with more neurons in the olfactory epithelium should express more receptor types . We show that simple dynamical rules for neural birth and death processes converge to the predicted optimum .
After revision:  The optimal receptor distribution is sensitive to the global context of the correlated responses of all receptor types in the population. We demonstrate how this effect reproduces the context-dependence seen in experiments. We also show that the optimal receptor distribution can be achieved by following simple dynamical rules for neural birth and death processes converge to the predicted optimum .