Related papers: Complexity, Development, and Evolution in Morphoge…
The capacity to adapt can greatly influence the success of systems that need to compensate for damaged parts, learn how to achieve robust performance in new environments, or exploit novel opportunities that originate from new technological…
In this review, we discuss modularity and hierarchy in biological systems. We review examples from protein structure, genetics, and biological networks of modular partitioning of the geometry of biological space. We review theories to…
The spontaneous organization of collective activities in animal groups and societies has attracted a considerable amount of attention over the last decade. This kind of coordination often permits group-living species to achieve collective…
We study the collective behaviour of an ensemble of coupled motile elements whose interactions depend on time and are alternatively attractive or repulsive. The evolution of interactions is driven by individual internal variables with…
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…
We explore how physical scale and population size shape the emergence of complex behaviors in open-ended ecological environments. In our setting, agents are unsupervised and have no explicit rewards or learning objectives but instead evolve…
Group formation and coordination are fundamental characteristics of living systems, essential for performing tasks and ensuring survival. Interactions between individuals play a key role in group formation, and the impact of resource…
Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…
This paper proposes a simple model to capture the complexity of multi-layer systems where their constituent layers affect, are affected by, each other. The physical layer is a circuit composed by a power source and resistors in parallel.…
In studies of cultural differentiation, the joint mechanisms of homophily and influence have been able to explain how distinct cultural groups can form. While these mechanisms normally lead to cultural convergence, increased levels of…
Inter-individual differences are studied in natural systems, such as fish, bees, and humans, as they contribute to the complexity of both individual and collective behaviors. However, individuality in artificial systems, such as robotic…
Understanding the dynamical behavior of complex systems is of exceptional relevance in everyday life, from biology to economy. In order to describe the dynamical organization of complex systems, existing methods require the knowledge of the…
In order to develop systems capable of modeling artificial life, we need to identify, which systems can produce complex behavior. We present a novel classification method applicable to any class of deterministic discrete space and time…
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…
Throughout the evolution of biological species on Earth, cells and organs have developed many complex structures and processes to ensure their interactions with individual chemical molecules (small and macromolecular) and nanoscale objects…
Multicellular organisms comprise a diverse collection of stable tissues built from different cell types. It remains unclear how large numbers of interacting cells can precisely coordinate their gene expression during tissue…
Innovation and evolution are two processes of paramount relevance for social and biological systems. In general, the former allows to introduce elements of novelty, while the latter is responsible for the motion of a system in its phase…
The architecture of biological networks has been reported to exhibit high level of modularity, and to some extent, topological modules of networks overlap with known functional modules. However, how the modular topology of the molecular…
Biological systems can form complex three-dimensional structures through the collective behavior of agents that share a common update rule and operate without central control. How such distributed control gives rise to precise global…
The emergence of collective cooperation in competitive environments is a well-known phenomenon in biology, economics, and social systems. While most evolutionary game models focus on the evolution of strategies for a fixed game, how…