Related papers: Scaling the human niche
Life systems are complex and hierarchical, with diverse components at different scales, yet they sustain themselves, grow, and evolve over time. How can a theory of such complex biological states be developed? Here we note that for a…
Synergistic and antagonistic interactions in multi-species populations - such as resource sharing and competition - result in remarkably diverse behaviors in populations of interacting cells, such as in soil or human microbiomes, or clonal…
Games with environmental feedback have become a crucial area of study across various scientific domains, modelling the dynamic interplay between human decisions and environmental changes, and highlighting the consequences of our choices on…
The observed architecture of ecological and socio-economic networks differs significantly from that of random networks. From a network science standpoint, non-random structural patterns observed in real networks call for an explanation of…
Understanding how built environments shape human experience is central to designing sustainable cities. Cycling provides a critical case: it delivers health and environmental benefits, yet its uptake depends strongly on the experience of…
The emergence and impact of tipping points have garnered significant interest in both the social and natural sciences. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of feedbacks between human and natural systems, it is often assumed that…
Constraints placed upon the phenotypes of organisms result from their interactions with the environment. Over evolutionary timescales, these constraints feed back onto smaller molecular subnetworks comprising the organism. The evolution of…
Although definitions of technology exist to explain the patterns of technological innovations, there is no general definition that explain the role of technology for humans and other animal species in environment. The goal of this study is…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
We are interested in modeling some two-level population dynamics, resulting from the interplay of ecological interactions and phenotypic variation of individuals (or hosts) and the evolution of cells (or parasites) of two types living in…
Non-equilibrium thermodynamics has long been an area of substantial interest to ecologists because most fundamental biological processes, such as protein synthesis and respiration, are inherently energy-consuming. Microbial communities are…
Unprecedented imbalances and growing human impacts characterize the Anthropocene. It highlights the urgency of better choices, and the perspectives outlined here can inform our decision-making process. The Biocentric-Technological way…
Humans interact with each other on a daily basis by developing and maintaining various social norms and it is critical to form a deeper understanding of how such norms develop, how they change, and how fast they change. In this work, we…
Recent technological advances, especially in the field of machine learning, provide astonishing progress on the road towards artificial general intelligence. However, tasks in current real-world business applications cannot yet be solved by…
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?…
Cancer cells can be described as an invasive species that is able to establish itself in a new environment. The concept of niche construction can be utilized to describe the process by which cancer cells terraform their environment, thereby…
Scaling laws illuminate Nature's fundamental biological principles and guide bioinspired materials and structural designs. In simple cases they are based on the fundamental principle that all laws of nature remain unchanged (i.e.,…
Human cognition is profoundly shaped by the environments in which it unfolds. Yet, it remains an open question whether learning and decision making can be explained as a principled adaptation to the statistical structure of real-world…
Human-AI coevolution, defined as a process in which humans and AI algorithms continuously influence each other, increasingly characterises our society, but is understudied in artificial intelligence and complexity science literature.…
The interplay between space and evolution is an important issue in population dynamics, that is in particular crucial in the emergence of polymorphism and spatial patterns. Recently, biological studies suggest that invasion and evolution…