Related papers: What doesn't kill Gaia makes her stronger
The Gaia hypothesis considers the life-environment coupled system as a single entity that acts to regulate and maintain habitable conditions on Earth. In this paper we discuss three mechanisms which could potentially lead to Gaia: Selection…
When searching for inhabited exoplanets, understanding the boundaries of the habitable zone around the parent star is key. If life can strongly influence its global environment, then we would expect the boundaries of the habitable zone to…
The Gaia hypothesis postulates that life regulates its environment to be favorable for its own survival. Most planets experience numerous perturbations throughout their lifetimes such as asteroid impacts, volcanism, and the evolution of…
We modify the Tangled Nature Model of Christensen et. al. so that the agents affect the carrying capacity. This leads to a model of species-environment co-evolution where the system tends to have a larger carrying capacity with life than…
We discuss a simple model of co-evolution. In order to emphasise the effect of interaction between individuals the entire population is subjected to the same physical environment. Species are emergent structures and extinction, origination…
With the growing number of discovered exoplanets, the Gaia concept finds its second wind. The Gaia concept defines that the biosphere of an inhabited planet regulates a planetary climate through feedback loops such that the planet remains…
We present an individual based model of evolutionary ecology. The reproduction rate of individuals characterized by their genome depends on the composition of the population in genotype space. Ecological features such as the taxonomy and…
The search for habitable exoplanets inspires the question - how do habitable planets form? Planet habitability models traditionally focus on abiotic processes and neglect a biotic response to changing conditions on an inhabited planet. The…
We study a version of the Tangled Nature model of evolutionary ecology redefined in a phenotype space where mutants have properties correlated to their parents. The model has individual-based dynamics whilst incorporating species scale…
Understanding systems level behaviour of many interacting agents is challenging in various ways, here we'll focus on the how the interaction between components can lead to hierarchical structures with different types of dynamics, or…
We argue that the stochastic dynamics of interacting agents which replicate, mutate and die constitutes a non-equilibrium physical process akin to aging in complex materials. Specifically, our study uses extensive computer simulations of…
We study the Tangled Nature model of macro evolution and demonstrate that the co-evolutionary dynamics produces an increasingly correlated core of well occupied types. At the same time the entire configuration of types becomes increasing…
The dynamic nature of life's ability to thrive in diverse and changing planetary environments suggests that habitability and survival depend on the evolutionary path and life adaptation to environmental conditions. Here we explore such…
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?…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
Cyclic dominance between species may yield spiral waves that are known to provide a mechanism enabling persistent species coexistence. This observation holds true even in presence of spatial heterogeneity in the form of quenched disorder.…
Genetic information and environmental factors determine the path of an individuals life and therefore, the evolution of its entire species. We have succeeded in proposing and studying a model that captures this idea. In our model, a…
Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history. For example, molecular oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere…
In this paper we introduce some simple models, based on rolling dice, to explore mechanisms proposed to explain planetary habitability. The idea is to study these selection mechanisms in an analytically tractable setting, isolating their…
This paper explores coevolution and governance of common goods using models of coevolving biospheres, in which adapting populations must collectively regulate their planet's climate or face extinction. The results support the Gaia…