Related papers: Choices in the transformative Anthropocene
The concept of (auto)catalytic systems has become a cornerstone in understanding evolutionary processes in various fields. The common ground is the observation that for the production of new species/goods/ideas/elements etc. the…
This article is a presentation of specific recent results describing scaling limits of individual-based models. Thanks to them, we wish to relate the time-scales typical of demographic dynamics and natural selection to the parameters of the…
Species introductions promote secondary contacts between taxa with long histories of allopatric divergence. Anthropogenic contact zones thus offer valuable contrasts to speciation studies in natural systems where past spatial isolations may…
Culture evolves, not just in the trivial sense that cultures change over time, but also in the strong sense that such change is governed by Darwinian principles. Both biological and cultural evolution are essentially cumulative selection…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
To assess the number of life-bearing worlds in astrophysical environments, it is necessary to take the intertwined processes of abiogenesis (birth), extinction (death), and transfer of life (migration) into account. We construct a…
A reliable understanding of the Earth system is essential for the life quality of modern society. Natural hazards are the cause of most life and resource losses. The ability to define the conditions for a sustainable development of…
Humans stand alone in terms of their potential to collectively and cumulatively change their culture in an open-ended manner. This open-endedness provides societies with the ability to continually expand their resources and to increase…
In abstract terms, ecosystem ecology is about determining when two ecosystems, superficially different, are alike in some deeper way. An external observer can choose any ecosystem property as being important. In contrast, two ecosystems are…
We integrate dual-process theories of human cognition with evolutionary game theory to study the evolution of automatic and controlled decision-making processes. We introduce a model where agents who make decisions using either automatic or…
With the use of the appropriate technology, such as photovoltaics and seawater desalination, humans have the ability to sustainably increase their production of food and energy while minimising detrimental impacts on the Earth system.
Interaction with its immediate environment determines the ecology of an organism. Species present in any habitat, wild or urban, may face extreme pressure due to sudden perturbations. When such disturbances are unpredictable, it becomes…
There is a scientific and ethical imperative to embrace a multidimensional, continuous view of ancestry and move away from continental ancestry categories
In multi-agent environments in which coordination is desirable, the history of play often causes lock-in at sub-optimal outcomes. Notoriously, technologies with a significant environmental footprint or high social cost persist despite the…
The anthropic principle implies that life can emerge and be sustained only in a narrow range of values of fundamental constants. Here we show that anthropic arguments can set powerful constraints on {\em transient} variations of the…
While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico. Known as open-endedness, we've been…
Biological populations are subject to fluctuating environmental conditions. Different adaptive strategies can allow them to cope with these fluctuations: specialization to one particular environmental condition, adoption of a generalist…
A major obstacle in analyzing the evolution of information exchange and processing is our insufficient understanding of the underlying signaling and decision-making biological mechanisms. For instance, it is unclear why are humans unique in…
Evolution by natural selection can be seen an algorithm for generating creative solutions to difficult problems. More precisely, evolution by natural selection is a class of algorithms that share a set of properties. The question we address…
Modern biological tools have made it possible to unequivocally demonstrate the deep relationship among species in terms of genes and basic molecular mechanisms. In addition, results from genetic, physical and physiological approaches…