Related papers: Ecosystems as adaptive living circuits
Ecological systems are emergent features of ecological and adaptive dynamics of a community of interacting species. By natural selection through the abiotic environment and by co-adaptation within the community, species evolve, thereby…
The fast-slow dynamics of an eco-evolutionary system are studied, where we consider the feedback actions of environmental resources that are classified into those that are self-renewing and those externally supplied. We show although these…
Environmental science almost invariably proposes problems of extreme complexity, typically characterized by strongly nonlinear evolution dynamics. The systems under investigation have many degrees of freedom - which makes them complicated -…
Biological transport networks are highly optimized structures that ensure power-efficient distribution of fluids across various domains, including animal vasculature and plant venation. Theoretically, these networks can be described as…
A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and…
Chemically active droplets provide simple models for cell-like systems that can grow and divide. Such active droplet systems are driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium and turn over chemically, which corresponds to a simple metabolism.…
Persistent economic competition is often justified as a mechanism of innovation, efficiency, and welfare maximization. Yet empirical evidence across disciplines reveals that competition systematically generates fragility, inequality, and…
Active systems evade the rules of equilibrium thermodynamics by constantly dissipating energy at the level of their microscopic components. This energy flux stems from the conversion of a fuel, present in the environment, into sustained…
Extremal principles are fundamental in our interpretation of phenomena in nature. One of the best known examples is the second law of thermodynamics, governing most physical and chemical systems and stating the continuous increase of…
The population dynamics and stability of ecosystems of interacting species is studied from the perspective of non-equilibrium thermodynamics by assuming that species, through their biotic and abiotic interactions, are units of entropy…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
Ecology and evolution are inseparable. Motivated by some recent experiments, we have developed models of evolutionary ecology from the perspective of dynamic networks. In these models, in addition to the intra-node dynamics, which…
Biological evolution of a population is governed by the fitness landscape, which is a map from genotype to fitness. However, a fitness landscape depends on the organisms environment, and evolution in changing environments is still poorly…
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…
Living systems maintain or increase local order by working against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thermodynamic consistency is restored as they dissipate heat, thereby increasing the net entropy of their environment. Recently introduced…
The ability to monitor nutrient and other environmental conditions with high sensitivity is crucial for cell growth and survival. Sensory adaptation allows a cell to recover its sensitivity after a transient response to a shift in the…
In order to transmit biochemical signals, biological regulatory systems dissipate energy with concomitant entropy production. Additionally, signaling often takes place in challenging environmental conditions. In a simple model regulatory…
Instances of critical-like characteristics in living systems at each organizational level as well as the spontaneous emergence of computation (Langton), indicate the relevance of self-organized criticality (SOC). But extrapolating complex…
Living systems, from single cells to higher vertebrates, receive a continuous stream of non-stationary inputs that they sense, e.g., via cell surface receptors or sensory organs. Integrating these time-varying, multi-sensory, and often…
Apparent biodiversity on earth exists only if we compare different species separated from their environments. Meanwhile coexisting species have to be identical in terms of energetic interactions. Consider the biosphere as a network of…