Related papers: Molecular diversity as a biosignature
Here we advocate an observational strategy to help prioritize exoplanet observations. It starts with more easily obtained observational data, and ranks exoplanets for more difficult follow-up observations based on the likelihood of avoiding…
The study of origins of life on Earth and the search for life on other planets are closely linked. Prebiotic chemical scenarios can help prioritize planets as targets for the search for life as we know it and can provide informative priors…
Theory and observation for the search for life on exoplanets via atmospheric "biosignature gases" is accelerating, motivated by the capabilities of the next generation of space- and ground-based telescopes. The most observationally…
An increasing number of potentially habitable terrestrial planets and planet candidates are found by ongoing planet search programs. The search for atmospheric signatures to establish planetary habitability and the presence of life might be…
Robust exoplanet characterization studies are underway, and the community is looking ahead toward developing observational strategies to search for life beyond our solar system. With the development of life detection approaches like…
Thousands of exoplanets orbit nearby stars, showcasing a remarkable diversity in mass, size, and orbits. With the James Webb Space Telescope now operational, we are observing exoplanet atmospheres and aiming to reach down to small,…
We develop a theoretical framework to understand the persistence and coexistence of competitive species in a spatially explicit metacommunity model with a heterogeneous dispersal kernel. Our analysis, based on methods from the physics of…
Texture can be defined as the change of image intensity that forms repetitive patterns, resulting from physical properties of the object's roughness or differences in a reflection on the surface. Considering that texture forms a complex…
In an effort to catalog insect biodiversity, we propose a new large dataset of hand-labelled insect images, the BIOSCAN-Insect Dataset. Each record is taxonomically classified by an expert, and also has associated genetic information…
Technosignatures refer to observational manifestations of technology that could be detected through astronomical means. Most previous searches for technosignatures have focused on searches for radio signals, but many current and future…
Diversity measurement underpins the study of biological systems, but measures used vary across disciplines. Despite their common use and broad utility, no unified framework has emerged for measuring, comparing and partitioning diversity.…
A review of the mechanisms of speciation is performed. The mechanisms of the evolution of species, taking into account the feedback of the state of the environment and mechanisms of the emergence of complexity, are considered. It is shown…
Structural assessment of biomolecular complexes is vital for translating molecular models into functional insights, shaping our understanding of biology and aiding drug discovery. However, current structure-based scoring functions often…
Atmospheric chemical disequilibrium has been proposed as a method for detecting extraterrestrial biospheres from exoplanet observations. Chemical disequilibrium is potentially a generalized biosignature since it makes no assumptions about…
We propose the mathematical notion of information gain as a way of quantitatively assessing the value of biosignature missions. This makes it simple to determine how mission value depends on design parameters, prior knowledge, and input…
Exoplanet science is one of the most thriving fields of modern astrophysics. A major goal is the atmospheric characterization of dozens of small, terrestrial exoplanets in order to search for signatures in their atmospheres that indicate…
Planetary surface habitability has so far been considered, in the main, upon a global scale. The increasing number of 3D modelling studies of (exo)planetary climate has highlighted the need for a more nuanced understanding of surface…
Homochirality is a generic and unique property of all biochemical life and the fractional circular polarization of light it induces therefore constitutes a potentially unambiguous biosignature.} However, while high-quality circular…
Imaging and resolved spectroscopy reveal varying environmental conditions in our dynamic solar system. Many key advances have focused on how these conditions change over time. Observatory-level commitments to conduct annual observations of…
Complementarity among species with different traits is one of the basic processes affecting biodiversity, defined as the number of species in the ecosystem. We present here a soluble model ecosystem in which the species are characterized by…