Related papers: Theoretical ecology without species
Disordered systems theory provides powerful tools to analyze the generic behaviors of highdimensional systems, such as species-rich ecological communities or neural networks. By assuming randomness in their interactions, universality…
Psychology has had difficulty accounting for the creative, context-sensitive manner in which concepts are used. We believe this stems from the view of concepts as identifiers rather than bridges between mind and world that participate in…
We discuss the relevance of studying ecology within the framework of Complexity Science from a statistical mechanics approach. Ecology is concerned with understanding how systems level properties emerge out of the multitude of interactions…
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…
Although networks provide a powerful approach to study a large variety of ecological systems, their formulation does not typically account for multiple interaction types, interactions that vary in space and time, and interconnected systems…
An ecological network is a formal representation of a specific type of interaction in a corresponding ecosystem. Such networks have traditionally been modelled as encoding exclusively pairwise interactions among the fundamental units of…
How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…
A hierarchical structure describing the inter-relationships of species has long been a fundamental concept in systematic biology, from Linnean classification through to the more recent quest for a 'Tree of Life.' In this paper we use an…
Main aim of this topical issue is to report recent advances in noisy nonequilibrium processes useful to describe the dynamics of ecological systems and to address the mechanisms of spatio-temporal pattern formation in ecology both from the…
A central feature of complex systems is the relevance and entanglement of different levels of description. For instance, the dynamics of ecosystems can be alternatively described in terms of large ecological processes and classes of…
Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…
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…
Ecological systems comprise an astonishing diversity of species that cooperate or compete with each other forming complex mutual dependencies. The minimum requirements to maintain a large species diversity on long time scales are in general…
A modeling formalism is proposed for the description and study of living and life-like systems. It provides an abstract conceptual model framework for real life and evolution of biological organisms. It is proposed, that this model…
Environmental science almost invariably proposes problems of extreme complexity, typically characterized by strongly nonlinear evolution dynamics. The systems under investigation have many degrees of freedom - which makes them complicated -…
The modeling of complex systems such as ecological or socio-economic systems can be very challenging. Although various modeling approaches exist, they are generally not compatible and mutually consistent, and empirical data often do not…
The consensus that complexity begets stability in ecosystems was challenged in the seventies, a result recently extended to ecologically-inspired networks. The approaches assume the existence of a feasible equilibrium, i.e. with positive…
Living systems are typically characterized by irreversible processes. A condition equivalent to the reversibility is the detailed balance, whose absence is an obstacle for analytically solving ecological models. We revisit a promising model…
Ecosystems display a complex spatial organization. Ecologists have long tried to characterize them by looking at how different measures of biodiversity change across spatial scales. Ecological neutral theory has provided simple predictions…
Microbiome-based stratification of healthy individuals into compositional categories, referred to as "community types", holds promise for drastically improving personalized medicine. Despite this potential, the existence of community types…