Related papers: Ecosystems in the Anthropocene: transformative dri…

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…

This paper presents a conceptual model describing the medium and long-term co-evolution of natural and socio-economic subsystems of Earth. An economy is viewed as an out-of-equilibrium dissipative structure that can only be maintained with…

Earth's future detectability depends upon the trajectory of our civilization over the coming centuries. Human civilization is also the only known example of an energy-intensive civilization, so our history and future trajectories provide…

Many organisms live in populations structured by space and by class, exhibit plastic responses to their social partners, and are subject to non-additive ecological and fitness effects. Social evolution theory has long recognized that all of…

The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…

Mixed microbial communities, usually composed of various bacterial and fungal species, are fundamental in a plethora of environments, from soil to human gut and skin. Their evolution is a paradigmatic example of intertwined dynamics, where…

Biodiversity is essential to the viability of ecological systems. Species diversity in ecosystems is promoted by cyclic, non-hierarchical interactions among competing populations. Such non-transitive relations lead to an evolution with…

Genetic information and environmental factors determine the path of an individuals life and therefore, the evolution of its entire species. We have succeeded in proposing and studying a model that captures this idea. In our model, a…

Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history. For example, molecular oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere…

1. Theoretical models pertaining to feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes are prevalent in multiple biological fields. An integrative overview is currently lacking, due to little crosstalk between the fields and the use of…

In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of…

Global environmental change is pushing many socio-environmental systems towards critical thresholds, where ecological systems' states are on the precipice of tipping points and interventions are needed to navigate or avert impending…

1. An understanding of how biodiversity confers ecosystem stability is crucial in managing ecosystems under major environmental changes. Multiple biodiversity drivers can stabilize ecosystem functions over time. However, we know little…

Habitat loss, driven primarily by anthropogenic activity, significantly threatens ecosystem sustainability. While it is well understood that habitat loss is the leading contributor to declines in biodiversity worldwide, the connection…

Resilience is a property of social, ecological, social-ecological and biophysical systems. It describes the capacity of a system to cope with, adapt to and innovate in response to a changing surrounding. Given the current climate change…

We discuss a simple model of co-evolution. In order to emphasise the effect of interaction between individuals the entire population is subjected to the same physical environment. Species are emergent structures and extinction, origination…

Since steep declines in a population's size also typically alter its composition, population bottlenecks are considered highly important for evolution. However, despite such significance, the mechanisms governing the impact of a given…

Cooperation is fundamental to human societies. While several basic theoretical mechanisms underlying its evolution have been established, research addressing more realistic settings remains underdeveloped. Drawing on the hypothesis that…

For billions of years, evolution has been the driving force behind the development of life, including humans. Evolution endowed humans with high intelligence, which allowed us to become one of the most successful species on the planet.…

Social evolutionary theory seeks to explain increases in the scale and complexity of human societies, from origins to present. Over the course of the twentieth century, social evolutionary theory largely fell out of favor as a way of…