Related papers: Life is physics: evolution as a collective phenome…

Embryogenesis, the process by which an organism forms and develops, has long been and still is a major field of investigation in the natural sciences. By which means, which forces, are embryonic cells and tissues assembled, deformed, and…

The possibility of complicated dynamic behaviour driven by non-linear feedbacks in dynamical systems has revolutionized science in the latter part of the last century. Yet despite examples of complicated frequency dynamics, the possibility…

Motivated by the results of recent laboratory experiments (Yoshida et al. Nature, 424, 303-306 (2003)) as well as many earlier field observations that evolutionary changes can take place in ecosystems over relatively short ecological time…

The biological world, especially its majority microbial component, is strongly interacting and may be dominated by collective effects. In this review, we provide a brief introduction for statistical physicists of the way in which living…

Complex systems throughout Nature display structures and functions that are built and maintained, at least in part, by optimal energies flowing through them--not specific, ideal values, rather ranges in energy rate density below which…

We attempt to provide a comprehensive model of evolution of science across millennia taking into account the contributions of other intellectual traditions, cultural value system and increasing in sophistication of humans in their study of…

The central goal of a dynamical theory of evolution is to abstract the mean evolutionary trajectory in the trait space by considering ecological processes at the level of the individual. In this work, we develop such a theory for a new…

In abstract terms, ecosystem ecology is about determining when two ecosystems, superficially different, are alike in some deeper way. An external observer can choose any ecosystem property as being important. In contrast, two ecosystems are…

`Entropy' appears as driving force in many different evolution equations, both deterministic and stochastic, and in these equations this `entropy' also takes different forms. We show how all these examples can be understood as different…

What features characterise complex system dynamics? Power laws and scale invariance of fluctuations are often taken as the hallmarks of complexity, drawing on analogies with equilibrium critical phenomena[1-3]. Here we argue that slow,…

The question "What is life?" has been asked and studied by the researchers of various fields. Nevertheless, no global theory which unified various aspects of life has been proposed so far. Considering that the physical principle for the…

The adaptation process of a species to a new environment is a significant area of study in biology. As part of natural selection, adaptation is a mutation process which improves survival skills and reproductive functions of species. Here,…

This work aims to present our current best physical understanding of common-envelope evolution (CEE). We highlight areas of consensus and disagreement, and stress ideas which should point the way forward for progress in this important but…

There is an intrinsic relationship between the molecular evolution in primordial period and the properties of genomes and proteomes of contemporary species. The genomic data may help us understand the driving force of evolution of life at…

Complex change is often described as "evolutionary" in economics, policy, and technology, yet most system dynamics models remain constrained to fixed state spaces and equilibrium-seeking behavior. This paper argues that evolutionary…

Life is commonly described as a self-organized, far-from-equilibrium process that maintains internal order by consuming free energy and exporting entropy. This thermodynamic view underlies diverse theoretical frameworks -- from autopoiesis…

Traditionally, frequency dependent evolutionary dynamics is described by deterministic replicator dynamics assuming implicitly infinite population sizes. Only recently have stochastic processes been introduced to study evolutionary dynamics…

A major aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the respective roles of adaptive versus non-adaptive changes in the evolution of complexity. While selection is certainly responsible for the spread and maintenance of complex phenotypes,…

The chapter presents some new approaches to describing the collective behavior of complex systems of mathematical biology based on the evolution equations of observables such as open systems. This representation of kinetic evolution has…

Quantum biology is an emerging field of research that concerns itself with the experimental and theoretical exploration of non-trivial quantum phenomena in biological systems. In this tutorial overview we aim to bring out fundamental…