Related papers: Selection Principles for Gaia
Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. The structure of a biological population affects which traits evolve. Understanding evolutionary game dynamics in structured populations is difficult. Precise results have been…
Concomitant with the evolution of biological diversity must have been the evolution of mechanisms that facilitate evolution, due to the essentially infinite complexity of protein sequence space. We describe how evolvability can be an object…
A large fraction of massive stars are found in higher order systems where the presence of a tertiary may significantly modify the system's evolution. In particular, it can lead to increased numbers of compact object binaries and accelerate…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
Coupling constitutes a foundational mechanism in the Earth system, regulating the interconnected physical, chemical, and biological processes that link its spheres. This review examines how emerging artificial intelligence (AI) methods…
We present novel analytical results about ecosystem species diversity that stem from a proposed coarse grained neutral model based on birth-death processes. The relevance of the problem lies in the urgency for understanding and synthesizing…
A new model for evolving Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) is proposed in this paper. The model is based on the Multi Expression Programming (MEP) technique. Each MEP chromosome encodes an evolutionary pattern that is repeatedly used for…
Aging, as defined in terms of the slope of the probability of death versus time (hazard curve), is a generic phenomenon observed in nearly all complex systems. Theoretical models of aging predict hazard curves that monotonically increase in…
Competitive exclusion, a key principle of ecology, can be generalized to understand many other complex systems. Individuals under surviving pressure tend to be different from others, and correlations among them change correspondingly to the…
Recently, the eco-evolutionary game theory which describes the coupled dynamics of strategies and environment have attracted great attention. At the same time, most of the current work is focused on the classic two-player two-strategy game.…
We report a new system of artificial life called Lenia (from Latin lenis "smooth"), a two-dimensional cellular automaton with continuous space-time-state and generalized local rule. Computer simulations show that Lenia supports a great…
The dynamic nature of life's ability to thrive in diverse and changing planetary environments suggests that habitability and survival depend on the evolutionary path and life adaptation to environmental conditions. Here we explore such…
Energy saving mechanisms are ubiquitous in nature. Aerodynamic and hydrodynamic drafting, vortice uplift, Bernoulli suction, thermoregulatory coupling, path following, physical hooks, synchronization, and cooperation are only some of the…
The theory of lithopanspermia proposes the natural exchange of organisms between solar system bodies through meteorites. The focus of this theory comprises three distinct stages: planetary ejection, interplanetary transit and planetary…
Community ecology has traditionally relied on the competitive exclusion principle, a piece of common wisdom in conceptual frameworks developed to describe species assemblages. Key concepts in community ecology, such as limiting similarity…
Earth system analysis is the study of the joint dynamics of biogeophysical, social and technological processes on our planet. To advance our understanding of possible future development pathways and identify management options for…
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…
We study the probabilities of evolution based on random mutations and natural selection. We conclude that evolution to multicellular eukaryots, or even prokaryots, is unlikely to be the result of only random mutations. Complex organisms…
At any moment in time, evolution is faced with a formidable challenge: refining the already highly optimised design of biological species, a feat accomplished through all preceding generations. In such a scenario, the impact of random…
Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics…