Related papers: Ecology theory disentangles microbial dichotomies
Many biological systems regulate phenotypic heterogeneity as a fitness-maximising strategy in uncertain and dynamic environments. Analysis of such strategies is typically confined both to a discrete set of environmental conditions, and to a…
At the heart of many contemporary theories of life is the concept of biological self-organisation: organisms have to continuously produce and maintain the conditions of their own existence in order to stay alive. The way in which these…
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…
Resource-based competition between microorganisms species in continuous culture has been studied extensively both experimentally and theoretically, mostly for bacteria through Monod and and Contois "constant yield" models, or for…
The origin of cellular life can be described in terms of the transition from inorganic matter: solids, liquids and gases, to the emergence of cooperative assemblies of organic matter, DNA and proteins,capable of replication and metabolism.…
In a complex system, the individual components are neither so tightly coupled or correlated that they can all be treated as a single unit, nor so uncorrelated that they can be approximated as independent entities. Instead, patterns of…
Life systems are complex and hierarchical, with diverse components at different scales, yet they sustain themselves, grow, and evolve over time. How can a theory of such complex biological states be developed? Here we note that for a…
Biological organisms exhibit diverse strategies for adapting to varying environments. For example, a population of organisms may express the same phenotype in all environments (`unvarying strategy'), or follow environmental cues and express…
Spatial structure and species interactions jointly shape the dynamics and biodiversity of ecological systems, yet most theoretical models either neglect spatial heterogeneity or sacrifice analytical tractability. Here, we provide a unified…
In this paper we address the collective management of environmental commons with multiple usages in the framework of the mathematical viability theory. We consider that the stakeholders can derive from the study of their own socioeconomic…
The Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology (METE) is a unified theory of biodiversity that predicts a large number of macroecological patterns using only information on the species richness, total abundance, and total metabolic rate of the…
In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of…
This paper proposes an approach to environmental accounting useful for studying the feasibility of socio-economic systems in relation to the external constraints posed by ecological compatibility. The approach is based on a multi-scale…
Natural ecosystems are characterized by striking diversity of form and functions and yet exhibit deep symmetries emerging across scales of space, time and organizational complexity. Species-area relationships and species-abundance…
A central question in ecology is to understand the ecological processes that shape community structure. Niche-based theories have emphasized the important role played by competition for maintaining species diversity. Many of these insights…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
We study the statistical underpinnings of life. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life and illustrate how, contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in…
Our view of the microbial world and its impact on human health is changing radically with the ability to sequence uncultured or unculturable microbes sampled directly from their habitats, ability made possible by fast and cheap next…
Bacteria and their bacteriophages are the most abundant, widespread and diverse groups of biological entities on the planet. In an attempt to understand how the interactions between bacteria, virulent phages and temperate phages might…
The theory of life history evolution provides a powerful framework to understand the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens in both epidemic and endemic situations. This framework, however, relies on the assumption that pathogen populations are…