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Galaxy comoving number density is commonly used to forgeprogenitor/descendant links between observed galaxy populations at differentepochs. However, this method breaks down in the presence of galaxy mergers, orwhen galaxies experience stochastic growth rates. We present a simple analyticframework to treat the physical processes that drive the evolution anddiffusion of galaxies within comoving number density space. The evolution inmass rank order of a galaxy population with time is influenced by the galaxycoagulation rate and galaxy "mass rank scatter" rate. We quantify the relativecontribution of these two effects to the mass rank order evolution. We showthat galaxy coagulation is dominant at lower redshifts and stellar masses,while scattered growth rates dominate the mass rank evolution at higherredshifts and stellar masses. For a galaxy population at $10^{10} M_\odot$,coagulation has been the dominant effect since $z=2.2$, but a galaxy populationat $10^{11} M_\odot$ was dominated by mass rank scatter until $z=0.6$. We showthat although the forward and backward median number density evolution tracksare asymmetric, the backward median number density evolution can be obtained byconvolving the descendant distribution function with progenitor relativeabundances. We tabulate fits for the median number density evolution andscatter which can be applied to improve the way galaxy populations are linkedin multi-epoch observational datasets.

Forward and backward galaxy evolution in comoving number density space