Related papers: Predicting Ecosystem Response to Perturbation from…
Random matrix theory successfully connects the structure of interactions of large ecological communities to their ability to respond to perturbations. One of the most debated aspects of this approach is the missing role of population…
Ecologists have long argued about the strength of density dependence and population regulation, respectively defined as the short-term and long-term rates of return to equilibrium. Here, I give three arguments for the intractability of…
In the past years, a remarkable mapping has been found between the dynamics of a population of M individuals undergoing random mutations and selection, and that of a single system in contact with a thermal bath with temperature 1/M. This…
In the face of uncertain biological response to climate change and the many critiques concerning model complexity it is increasingly important to develop predictive mechanistic frameworks that capture the dominant features of ecological…
Ecosystem approach to fisheries requires a thorough understanding of fishing impacts on ecosystem status and processes as well as predictive tools such as ecosystem models to provide useful information for management. The credibility of…
Is there an overriding principle of nature, hitherto overlooked, that governs all population behavior? A single principle that drives all the regimes observed in nature - exponential-like growth, saturated growth, population decline,…
Thermodynamics is based on the notions of energy and entropy. While energy is the elementary quantity governing physical dynamics, entropy is the fundamental concept in information theory. In this work, starting from first principles, we…
Orderliness, reflected via mathematical laws, is encountered in different frameworks involving social groups. Here we show that a thermodynamics can be constructed that macroscopically describes urban population flows. Microscopic dynamic…
The coupling between evolutionary and ecological changes (eco-evolutionary dynamics) has been shown to be relevant among diverse species, and is also of interest outside of ecology, i.e. in cancer evolution. These dynamics play an important…
Quantum systems are invariably open, evolving under surrounding influences rather than in isolation. Standard open quantum system methods eliminate all information on the environmental state to yield a tractable description of the system…
Population dynamics in random ecological networks are investigated by analyzing a simple deterministic equation. It is found that a sequence of abrupt changes of populations punctuating quiescent states characterize the long time behavior.…
Living systems are maintained out-of-equilibrium by external driving forces. At stationarity, they exhibit emergent selection phenomena that break equilibrium symmetries and originate from the expansion of the accessible chemical space due…
When complex systems are driven to extinction by some external factor, their non-stationary dynamics can present an intermittent behaviour between relative tranquility and burst of activity whose consequences are often catastrophic. To…
Biological systems perform an astonishing array of dynamical processes -- including development and repair, regulation, behavior and motor control, sensing and signaling, and adaptation, among others. Powered by the transduction of stored…
If a system is at thermodynamic equilibrium, an observer cannot tell whether a film of it is being played forward or in reverse: any transition will occur with the same frequency in the forward as in the reverse direction. However, if…
In stochastic thermodynamics, the entropy production of a thermodynamic system is defined by the irreversibility measured by the logarithm of the ratio of the path probabilities in the forward and reverse processes. We derive the relation…
Civilization produces knowledge, which acts as the driving force of its development. A macro-model of civilization that accounts for the effect of knowledge production on population, energy consumption and environmental conditions is…
Despite major advances in climate science over the last 30 years, persistent uncertainties in projections of future climate change remain. Climate projections are produced with increasingly complex models which attempt to represent key…
Adaptive systems -- such as a biological organism gaining survival advantage, an autonomous robot executing a functional task, or a motor protein transporting intracellular nutrients -- must model the regularities and stochasticity in their…
Unlike many physical nonequilibrium systems, in biological systems, the coupling to external energy sources is not a fixed parameter but adaptively controlled by the system itself. We do not have theoretical frameworks that allow for such…