Related papers: Modelling Singularities in Macroevolution
It has been suggested that innovations occur mainly by combination: the more inventions accumulate, the higher the probability that new inventions are obtained from previous designs. Additionally, it has been conjectured that the…
We develop a discrete-event modeling framework that captures the progression of geophysical systems toward catastrophic failure through sequences of distinct damage events. By representing system evolution as a succession of temporally…
Many physical systems are well described on domains which are relatively large in some directions but relatively thin in other directions. In this scenario we typically expect the system to have emergent structures that vary slowly over the…
This paper attempts to make feasible the evolutionary emergence of novelty in a supposedly deterministic world which behavior is associated with those of the mathematical dynamical systems. The work was motivated by the observation of…
When complex systems are driven to extinction by some external factor, their non-stationary dynamics can present an intermittent behaviour between relative tranquility and burst of activity whose consequences are often catastrophic. To…
Emergent phenomena share the fascinating property of not being obvious consequences of the design of the system in which they appear. This characteristic is no less relevant when attempting to simulate such phenomena, given that the outcome…
This essay advocates the view that any problem that has a meaningful empirical content, can be formulated in constructive, more definitely, finite terms. We consider combinatorial models of dynamical systems and approaches to statistical…
We study macroevolutionary dynamics by extending microevolutionary competition models to long time scales. It has been shown that for a general class of competition models, gradual evolutionary change in continuous phenotypes (evolutionary…
A simple model of macroevolution is proposed exhibiting both the property of punctuated equilibrium and the dynamics of potentialities for different species to evolve towards increasingly higher complexity. It is based on the phenomenon of…
Existing theoretical models of evolution focus on the relative fitness advantages of different mutants in a population while the dynamic behavior of the population size is mostly left unconsidered. We here present a generic stochastic model…
In complex systems, the interplay between nonlinear and stochastic dynamics, e.g., J. Monod's necessity and chance, gives rise to an evolutionary process in Darwinian sense, in terms of discrete jumps among attractors, with punctuated…
Emergence, the phenomena where a system's micro-scale dynamics facilitate the development of non-trivial, informative higher scales, has become a foundational concept in modern sciences, tying together fields as diverse as physics, biology,…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
An explanatory model for the emergence of evolvable units must display emerging structures that (1) preserve themselves in time (2) self-reproduce and (3) tolerate a certain amount of variation when reproducing. To tackle this challenge,…
The basic mechanics of evolution have been understood since Darwin. But debate continues over whether macroevolutionary phenomena are driven primary by the fitness structure of genotype space or by ecological interaction. In this paper we…
What features characterise complex system dynamics? Power laws and scale invariance of fluctuations are often taken as the hallmarks of complexity, drawing on analogies with equilibrium critical phenomena[1-3]. Here we argue that slow,…
We propose a framework for studying predictability of extreme events in complex systems. Major conceptual elements -- hierarchical structure, spatial dynamics, and external driving -- are combined in a classical branching diffusion with…
How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…
When can complex ecological interactions drive an entire ecosystem into a persistent non-equilibrium state, where species abundances keep fluctuating without going to extinction? We show that high-diversity spatially-extended systems, in…
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?…