Related papers: Fruitful symbioses between termites and computers
Termites present a very good natural metaphor to evolutionary computation. While each individuals computational power is small compared to more evolved species, it is the power of their colonies that inspires communication engineers. This…
We propose a generic model of eco-systems, with a {\it hierarchical} food web structure. In our computer simulations we let the eco-system evolve continuously for so long that that we can monitor extinctions as well as speciations over…
The emergence of multicellularity and developmental programs are among the major problems of evolutionary biology. Traditionally, research in this area has been based on the combination of data analysis and experimental work on one hand and…
Experimental evolution has yielded surprising insights into human history and evolution by shedding light on the roles of chance and contingency in history and evolution, and on the deep evolutionary roots of cooperation, conflict and kin…
One of the defining features of living systems is their adaptability to changing environmental conditions. This requires organisms to extract temporal and spatial features of their environment, and use that information to compute the…
Mixed microbial communities, usually composed of various bacterial and fungal species, are fundamental in a plethora of environments, from soil to human gut and skin. Their evolution is a paradigmatic example of intertwined dynamics, where…
With increased access to data and the advent of computers, the use of statistical tools and numerical simulations is becoming commonplace for ecologists. These approaches help improve our understanding of ecological phenomena and their…
Computer modelling for evolutionary systems consists in: 1) to store in the memory the individual features of each member of a large population; and 2) to update the whole system repeatedly, as time goes by, according to some prescribed…
Bio-digital systems that merge microbial life with technology promise new modes of computation, combining biological adaptability with digital precision. Yet realizing this potential symbiotically -- where biological and digital agents…
This study here suggests a classification of technologies based on taxonomic characteristics of interaction between technologies in complex systems that is not a studied research field in economics of technical change. The proposed taxonomy…
Human Computer Symbiosis is similar to Human Computer Interaction in the sense that it is about how humans and computer interact with each other. For this interaction to be made there needs to be a symbiotic relationship between man and…
How large ecosystems can create and maintain the remarkable biodiversity we see in nature is probably one of the biggest open questions in science, attracting attention from different fields, from Theoretical Ecology to Mathematics and…
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…
We study the evolution of the network properties of a populated network embedded in a genotype space characterised by either a low or a high number of potential links, with particular emphasis on the connectivity and clustering. Evolution…
Natural computing offers new opportunities to understand, model and analyze the complexity of the physical and human-created environment. This paper examines the application of natural computing in environmental informatics, by…
Ecology and evolution are inseparable. Motivated by some recent experiments, we have developed models of evolutionary ecology from the perspective of dynamic networks. In these models, in addition to the intra-node dynamics, which…
While evolution has inspired algorithmic methods of heuristic optimisation, little has been done in the way of using concepts of computation to advance our understanding of salient aspects of biological phenomena. We argue that under…
Mutualistic networks have been shown to involve complex patterns of interactions among animal and plant species. The architecture of these webs seems to pervade some of their robust and fragile behaviour. Recent work indicates that there is…
Social insects in nature such as ants, termites and bees construct their colonies collaboratively in a very efficient process. In these swarms, each insect contributes to the construction task individually showing redundant and parallel…
Termites which are able to forage in the open can be often seen, in the field or in the lab: (i) wandering around, forming no observable pattern, or (ii) clustering themselves in a dense and almost immobile pack, or (iii) milling about in a…