Related papers: Triggering A Climate Change Dominated "Anthropocen…
In contrast to the Earth, where frictional heating is typically negligible, we show that drag mechanisms could act as an important heat source in the strongly-forced atmospheres of some exoplanets, with the potential to alter the…
In the past years, a remarkable mapping has been found between the dynamics of a population of M individuals undergoing random mutations and selection, and that of a single system in contact with a thermal bath with temperature 1/M. This…
Hycean planets -- exoplanets with substantial water ice layers, deep surface oceans, and hydrogen-rich atmospheres -- are thought to be favorable environments for life. Due to a relative paucity of atmospheric greenhouse gases, hycean…
We construct a model of speciation from evolution in an ecosystem consisting of a limited amount of energy recources. The species posses genetic information, which is inherited according to the rules of the Penna model of genetic evolution.…
Environmental determinism in the past followed from the belief that the gods bestowed political power and the best possible weather on the sponsors of early scholars. Although later discredited in academia because of the associations with…
When complex systems are driven to extinction by some external factor, their non-stationary dynamics can present an intermittent behaviour between relative tranquility and burst of activity whose consequences are often catastrophic. To…
The search for biosignatures necessitates developing our understanding of life under different conditions. If life can influence the climate evolution of its planet then understanding the behaviour of life-climate feedbacks under extreme…
It is shown that the Earth System (ES) can, due to the impact of human activities, exhibit chaotic behaviour. Our arguments are based on the assumption that the ES can be described by a Landau-Ginzburg model, which, in itself, predicts that…
Culture evolves, not just in the trivial sense that cultures change over time, but also in the strong sense that such change is governed by Darwinian principles. Both biological and cultural evolution are essentially cumulative selection…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
This paper investigates the competition of two species in a heterogeneous environment subject to the effect of harvesting. The most realistic harvesting case is connected with the intrinsic growth rate, and the harvesting functions are…
1. Theoretical models pertaining to feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes are prevalent in multiple biological fields. An integrative overview is currently lacking, due to little crosstalk between the fields and the use of…
Overpopulation and environmental degradation due to inadequate resource-use are outcomes of human's ecosystem engineering that has profoundly modified the world's landscape. Despite the age-old concern that unchecked population and economic…
Environmental changes greatly influence the evolution of populations. Here, we study the dynamics of a population of two strains, one growing slightly faster than the other, competing for resources in a time-varying binary environment…
Life on Earth has experienced numerous upheavals over its approximately 4 billion year history. In previous work we have discussed how interruptions to stability lead, on average, to increases in habitability over time, a tendency we called…
The diversity of planetary systems that have been discovered are revealing the plethora of possible architectures, providing insights into planet formation and evolution. They also increase our understanding of system parameters that may…
We integrate dual-process theories of human cognition with evolutionary game theory to study the evolution of automatic and controlled decision-making processes. We introduce a model where agents who make decisions using either automatic or…
Unconstrained CO2 emission from fossil fuel burning has been the dominant cause of observed anthropogenic global warming. The amounts of "proven" and potential fossil fuel reserves are uncertain and debated. Regardless of the true values,…
Exoplanetary science continues to excite and surprise with its rich diversity. We discuss here some key aspects potentially influencing the range of exoplanetary terrestrial-type atmospheres which could exist in nature. We are motivated by…
The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies. Species interact not only with each other but indirectly through environmental effects, however…