Related papers: The Characteristic Time Scale of Cultural Evolutio…
The evolution of dispersal rate is studied with a model of several local populations linked by dispersal. Three dispersal strategies are considered where all, half, or none of the offspring disperse. The spatial scale (number of patches)…
This article is a presentation of specific recent results describing scaling limits of individual-based models. Thanks to them, we wish to relate the time-scales typical of demographic dynamics and natural selection to the parameters of the…
Time series, as one of the most fundamental representations of sequential data, has been extensively studied across diverse disciplines, including computer science, biology, geology, astronomy, and environmental sciences. The advent of…
We consider a Moran-type model of cultural evolution, which describes how traits emerge, are transmitted, and get lost in populations. Our analysis focuses on the underlying cultural genealogies; they were first described by Aguilar and…
How does social complexity depend on population size and cultural transmission? Kinship structures in traditional societies provide a fundamental illustration, where cultural rules between clans determine people's marriage possibilities.…
Human interactions can be either positive or negative, giving rise to different complex social or anti-social phenomena. The dynamics of these interactions often lead to certain spatio-temporal patterns and complex networks, which can be…
The last decades have not only been characterized by an explosive growth of data, but also an increasing appreciation of data as a valuable resource. Their value comes with the ability to extract meaningful patterns that are of economic,…
Scaling has been proposed as a powerful tool to analyze the properties of complex systems, and in particular for cities where it describes how various properties change with population. The empirical study of scaling on a wide range of…
Demographic heterogeneity is often studied through the geographical lens. Therefore it is considered at a predetermined spatial resolution, which is a suitable choice to understand scalefull phenomena. Spatial autocorrelation indices are…
The process of social expansion in Europe can be better understood with various concepts related to complexity science. Findings of exploratory research show a typical process of social expansion in Europe within the period 1495-1945, in…
Temporal editing patterns on Wikipedia provide a unique computational lens to explore cultural dynamics across linguistic communities. This study analyses over a decade of editorial activity (2001-2010) across eleven Wikipedia language…
Ecological and evolutionary dynamics have been historically regarded as unfolding at broadly separated timescales. However, these two types of processes are nowadays well documented to much more tightly than traditionally assumed,…
We present new theoretical and empirical results on the probability distributions of species persistence times in natural ecosystems. Persistence times, defined as the timespans occurring between species' colonization and local extinction…
Societal complexity may be at a historical peak. Distinct from entropy, complexity tends to rise as systems move away from order, crest at an intermediate state, and decline as entropy continues increasing. The use of a thermodynamic…
Culture is a collection of connected and potentially interactive patterns that characterize a social group or a passed-on idea that people acquire as members of society. While offline activities can provide a better picture of the…
Understanding demographic and migrational patterns constitutes a great challenge. Millions of individual decisions, motivated by economic, political, demographic, rational, and/or emotional reasons underlie the high complexity of…
Numerous urban indicators scale with population in a power law across cities, but whether the cross-sectional scaling law is applicable to the temporal growth of individual cities is unclear. Here we first find two paradoxical scaling…
The co-authorship network of scientists represents a prototype of complex evolving networks. By mapping the electronic database containing all relevant journals in mathematics and neuro-science for an eight-year period (1991-98), we infer…
We present statistics for the structure and time-evolution of a network constructed from user activity in an Internet community. The vastness and precise time resolution of an Internet community offers unique possibilities to monitor social…
The geographical pattern of human dialects is a result of history. Here, we formulate a simple spatial model of language change which shows that the final result of this historical evolution may, to some extent, be predictable. The model…