Related papers: Optimization hardness constrains ecological transi…

We view Digital Ecosystems to be the digital counterparts of biological ecosystems. Here, we are concerned with the creation of these Digital Ecosystems, exploiting the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems to evolve…

Living systems, from single cells to higher vertebrates, receive a continuous stream of non-stationary inputs that they sense, e.g., via cell surface receptors or sensory organs. Integrating these time-varying, multi-sensory, and often…

Much of our understanding of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms derives from analysis of low-dimensional models: with few interacting species, or few axes defining "fitness". It is not always clear to what extent the intuition derived…

With increased access to data and the advent of computers, the use of statistical tools and numerical simulations is becoming commonplace for ecologists. These approaches help improve our understanding of ecological phenomena and their…

We simulate an individual-based model that represents both the phenotype and genome of digital organisms with predator-prey interactions. We show how open-ended growth of complexity arises from the invariance of genetic evolution operators…

We develop a mathematical model of extinction and coexistence in a generic predator-prey ecosystem composed of two herbivores in asymmetrical competition and a hunter exerting a predatory pressure on both species. With the aim of…

Evolutionary computation offers a variety of tools to solve complex real-world optimization problems. However, research often focuses on smaller, simplified problems and optimization algorithms that sometimes miss expectations in real-world…

A common assumption in evolutionary thought is that adaptation drives an increase in biological complexity. However, the rules governing evolution of complexity appear more nuanced. Evolution is deeply connected to learning, where…

Social evolutionary theory seeks to explain increases in the scale and complexity of human societies, from origins to present. Over the course of the twentieth century, social evolutionary theory largely fell out of favor as a way of…

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…

The persistence of biodiversity of species is a challenging proposition in ecological communities in the face of Darwinian selection. The present article investigates beyond the pairwise competitive interactions and provides a novel…

We propose a generic model of eco-systems, with a {\it hierarchical} food web structure. In our computer simulations we let the eco-system evolve continuously for so long that that we can monitor extinctions as well as speciations over…

Simulation of population dynamics is a central research theme in computational biology, which contributes to understanding the interactions between predators and preys. Conventional mathematical tools of this theme, however, are incapable…

Many decision-making algorithms draw inspiration from the inner workings of individual biological systems. However, it remains unclear whether collective behavior among biological species can also lead to solutions for computational tasks.…

A fundamental question in the conjunction of information theory, biophysics, bioinformatics and thermodynamics relates to the principles and processes that guide the development of natural intelligence in natural environments where…

Empirical evidence suggesting that living systems might operate in the vicinity of critical points, at the borderline between order and disorder, has proliferated in recent years, with examples ranging from spontaneous brain activity to…

By generalizing a class of models recently introduced to account for protracted transients in biological systems, we identify a novel mechanism for hyperuniformity. In this model, competition of particles over a shared resource guides the…

We create a novel optimisation technique inspired by natural ecosystems, where the optimisation works at two levels: a first optimisation, migration of genes which are distributed in a peer-to-peer network, operating continuously in time;…

This note is a brief review of the analysis of long transients in dynamical systems. The problem of long transients arose in many disciplines, from physical and chemical kinetic to biology and even social sciences. Detailed analysis of…

Spatio-temporal complexity of ecological dynamics has been a major focus of research for a few decades. Pattern formation, chaos, regime shifts and long transients are frequently observed in field data but specific factors and mechanisms…