Related papers: Does Phylogenetic Proximity Explain Nestedness in …
We consider the concept of mutual information in ecological networks, and use this idea to analyse the Tangled Nature model of co-evolution. We show that this measure of correlation has two distinct behaviours depending on how we define the…
Background: Recent research in animal behaviour has contributed to determine how alignment, turning responses, and changes of speed mediate flocking and schooling interactions in different animal species. Here, we address specifically the…
Mutualistic interactions are widespread in nature, from plant communities and microbiomes to human organizations. Along with competition for resources, cooperative interactions shape biodiversity and contribute to the robustness of complex…
Phylogenetic networks which are, as opposed to trees, suitable to describe processes like hybridization and horizontal gene transfer, play a substantial role in evolutionary research. However, while non-treelike events need to be taken into…
The species-area relationship is one of the central generalizations in ecology however its origin has remained a puzzle. Since ecosystems are understood as energy transduction systems, the regularities in species richness are considered to…
The observation that phenotypic variability is ubiquitous in isogenic populations has led to a multitude of experimental and theoretical studies seeking to probe the causes and consequences of this variability. Whether it be in the context…
We introduce a mathematical model of symbiosis between different species by taking into account the influence of each species on the carrying capacities of the others. The modeled entities can pertain to biological and ecological societies…
We study the statistics of ecosystems with a variable number of co-evolving species. The species interact in two ways: by prey-predator relationships and by direct competition with similar kinds. The interaction coefficients change slowly…
The myriad microscopic interactions among the individual organisms that constitute an ecological system collectively give rise, at the macroscopic scale, to evolutionary trends. The ability to detect the directionality of such trends is…
The recent realization that entire communities fuse and separate (community coalescence) has led to a reappraisal of the forces determining species diversity and dynamics, especially in microbial communities where coalescence is likely…
Ecological systems have a high level of complexity combined with stability and rich biodiversity. Recently, the analysis of their properties and evolution has been pushed forward on a basis of concept of mutualistic networks that provides a…
We present new theoretical and empirical results on the probability distributions of species persistence times in natural ecosystems. Persistence times, defined as the timespans occurring between species' colonization and local extinction…
Complementarity among species with different traits is one of the basic processes affecting biodiversity, defined as the number of species in the ecosystem. We present here a soluble model ecosystem in which the species are characterized by…
Phylogenetic trees are simple models of evolutionary processes. They describe conditionally independent divergent evolution of taxa from common ancestors. Phylogenetic trees commonly do not have enough flexibility to adequately model all…
Many biological and social systems show significant levels of collective action. Several cooperation mechanisms have been proposed, yet they have been mostly studied independently. Among these, direct reciprocity supports cooperation on the…
A central concern of community ecology is the interdependence between interaction strengths and the underlying structure of the network upon which species interact. In this work we present a solvable example of such a feedback mechanism in…
James et al. (2012) presented simulations that apparently falsify the analytical result by Bastolla et al. (2009), who showed that nested mutualistic interactions decrease interspecific competition and increase biodiversity in model…
Evolutionary mechanism in a self-organized system cause some functional changes that force to adapt new conformation of the interaction pattern between the components of that system. Measuring the structural differences one can retrace the…
Evolutionary dynamics can be studied in well-mixed or structured populations. Population structure typically arises from the heterogeneous distribution of individuals in physical space or on social networks. Here we introduce a new type of…
Tree-based networks are a class of phylogenetic networks that attempt to formally capture what is meant by "tree-like" evolution. A given non-tree-based phylogenetic network, however, might appear to be very close to being tree-based, or…