Related papers: Scaling the human niche
This chapter begins by outlining a promising, new theoretical framework for the process by which human culture evolves inspired by the views of complexity theorists on the problem of how life began. Elements of culture, like species, evolve…
Globally, we are witnessing the rise of complex, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) related to changes in our daily environments. Obesity, asthma, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes are part of a long list of "lifestyle" diseases…
The role of the selection pressure and mutation amplitude on the behavior of a single-species population evolving on a two-dimensional lattice, in a periodically changing environment, is studied both analytically and numerically. The…
The Anthropocene is characterized by close interdependencies between the natural Earth system and the human society, posing novel challenges to model development. Here we present a conceptual model describing the long-term coevolution of…
Main aim of this topical issue is to report recent advances in noisy nonequilibrium processes useful to describe the dynamics of ecological systems and to address the mechanisms of spatio-temporal pattern formation in ecology both from the…
Human psychology plays an important role in organizational performance. However, understanding our employees is a difficult task due to issues such as psychological complexities, unpredictable dynamics, and the lack of data. Leveraging…
Population-level scaling in ecological systems arises from individual growth and death with competitive constraints. We build on a minimal dynamical model of metabolic growth where the tension between individual growth and mortality…
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…
Biological systems perform an astonishing array of dynamical processes -- including development and repair, regulation, behavior and motor control, sensing and signaling, and adaptation, among others. Powered by the transduction of stored…
Systems composed of distinct complex networks are present in many real-world environments, from society to ecological systems. In the present paper, we propose a network model obtained as a consequence of interactions between two species…
We are interested in modelling Darwinian evolution, resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. Our models are rooted in the microscopic, stochastic description of a population…
In recent years, community structure has emerged as a key component of complex network analysis. As more data has been collected, researchers have begun investigating changing community structure across multiple networks. Several methods…
In this thesis we contribute to the understanding of the pivotal role of the temporal dimension in networked social systems, previously neglected and now uncovered by the data revolution recently blossomed in this field. To this aim, we…
Ecological systems show a variety of characteristic patterns of biodiversity in space and time. It is a challenge for theory to find models that can reproduce and explain the observed patterns. Since the advent of island biogeography these…
In complex ecosystems such as microbial communities, there is constant ecological and evolutionary feedback between the residing species and the environment occurring on concurrent timescales. Species respond and adapt to their surroundings…
The relationship between physiological systems and modern electromechanical technologies is fast becoming intimate with high degrees of complex interaction. It can be argued that muscular function, limb movements, and touch perception serve…
Network ecologists investigate the structure, function, and evolution of ecological systems using network models and analyses. For example, network techniques have been used to study community interactions (i.e., food-webs, mutualisms),…
Ecological systems are complex dynamical systems. Modelling efforts on ecosystems' dynamical stability have revealed that population dynamics, being highly nonlinear, can be governed by complex fluctuations. Indeed, experimental and field…
There have been many studies to examine whether one trait is correlated with another trait across a group of present-day species (for example, do species with larger brains tend to have longer gestation times. Since the introduction of the…
Microbes are often discussed in terms of dichotomies such as copiotrophic/oligotrophic and fast/slow-growing microbes, defined using the characterisation of microbial growth in isolated cultures. The dichotomies are usually qualitative…