Related papers: Closed ecosystems extract energy through self-orga…
The possibility that evolutionary forces -- together with a few fundamental factors such as thermodynamic constraints, specific computational features enabling information processing, and ecological processes -- might constrain the logic of…
Recent work suggests that cross-feeding -- the secretion and consumption of metabolic biproducts by microbes -- is essential for understanding microbial ecology. Yet how cross-feeding and competition combine to give rise to ecosystem-level…
We propose a general scenario to analyze social and economic changes in modern environments. We illustrate the ideas with a model that incorporating the main trends is simple enough to extract analytical results and, at the same time,…
The quest on how to collectively self-organize in order to maximize the survival chances of the members of a social group requires finding an optimal compromise between maximizing the well-being of an individual and that of the group. Here…
We investigate species-rich mathematical models of ecosystems. While much of the existing literature focuses on the properties of equilibrium fixed points, persistent dynamics (e.g., limit cycles or chaos) have also been observed, both in…
Ecosystems are formed by networks of species and their interactions. Traditional models of such interactions assume a constant interaction strength between a given pair of species. However, there is often significant trait variation among…
Prevailing hypotheses recognize cities as 'super-organisms' which both provides organizing principles for cities and fills the scalar gap in the hierarchical living system between ecosystems and the entire planet. However, most analogies…
In harsh environments, organisms may self-organize into spatially patterned systems in various ways. So far, studies of ecosystem spatial self-organization have primarily focused on apparent orders reflected by regular patterns. However,…
Living systems contain intricate biochemical networks whose structure is closely related to their function and allows them to exhibit robust behavior in the presence of external stimuli. Such networks typically involve catalytic enzymes,…
A simple periodically driven system displaying rich behavior is introduced and studied. The system self-organizes into a mosaic of static ordered regions with three possible patterns, which are threaded by one-dimensional paths on which a…
Biological functions rely on ordered structures and intricately controlled collective dynamics. In contrast to systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, order is typically established and sustained in stationary states by continuous dissipation…
How do organisms recognize their environment by acquiring knowledge about the world, and what actions do they take based on this knowledge? This article examines hypotheses about organisms' adaptation to the environment from machine…
One of the defining features of living systems is their adaptability to changing environmental conditions. This requires organisms to extract temporal and spatial features of their environment, and use that information to compute the…
Understanding how biological homochirality emerged remains a challenge for the researchers interested in the origin of life. During the last decades, stable non-racemic steady states of nonequilibrium chemical systems have been discussed as…
The notion that the whole is more than the sum of its parts has a long tradition in science. This, of course, also applies to the Earth system. With its myriad of processes, spanning from purely physical to life and human activity, the…
Environmentally-powered computer systems operate on renewable energy harvested from their environment, such as solar or wind, and stored in batteries. While harvesting environmental energy has long been necessary for small-scale embedded…
Recent progress has clarified many features of the global architecture of biological metabolic networks, which have highly organized and optimized tolerances and tradeoffs (HOT) for functional requirements of flexibility, efficiency,…
High-throughput sequencing techniques such as metagenomic and metatranscriptomic technologies allow cataloging of functional characteristics of microbial community members as well as their taxonomic identity. Such studies have found that a…
In natural light harvesting systems, the sequential quantum events of photon absorption by specialized biological antenna complexes, charge separation, exciton formation and energy transfer to localized reaction centers culminates in the…
The terrestrial water cycle links the soil and atmosphere moisture reservoirs through four fluxes: precipitation, evaporation, runoff, and atmospheric moisture convergence (net import of water vapor to balance runoff). Each of these…