Related papers: Periodicity of mass extinctions without an extrate…
Twenty years ago, after analysing palaeontological data, Raup and Sepkoski suggested that mass extinctions on Earth appear cyclically in time with a period of approximately 26 million years (My). To explain the 26My period, a number of…
We present numerical results based on a simplified ecological system in evolution, showing features of extinction similar to that claimed for the biosystem on Earth. In the model each species consists of a population in interaction with the…
Mass extinction is a phenomenon in the history of life on Earth when a considerable number of species go extinct over a relatively short period of time. The magnitude of extinction varies between the events, the most well known are the…
Despite tremendous interest in the topic and decades of research, the origins of the major losses of biodiversity in the history of life on Earth remain elusive. A variety of possible causes for these mass-extinction events have been…
In a recent paper, we applied time series analysis methods to study the possible influence of the solar motion through the Galaxy on terrestrial extinction (Feng & Bailer-Jones 2013). We drew conclusions about the relative probabilities of…
We introduce a new model for large scale evolution and extinction in which species are organized into food chains. The system evolves by two processes: origination/speciation and extinction. In the model, extinction of a given species can…
We present a model for evolution and extinction in large ecosystems. The model incorporates the effects of interactions between species and the influences of abiotic environmental factors. We study the properties of the model by approximate…
The extinction of species is a core process that affects the diversity of life on Earth. One way of investigating the causes and consequences of extinctions is to build conceptual ecological models, and to use the dynamical outcomes of such…
Competitive birth-death processes often exhibit an oscillatory behavior. We investigate a particular case where the oscillation cycles are marginally stable on the mean-field level. An iconic example of such a system is the Lotka-Volterra…
A model for large-scale evolution recently introduced by Amaral and Meyer is studied analytically and numerically. Species are located at different trophic levels and become extinct if their prey becomes extinct. It is proved that this…
The statistical properties of an ecosystem composed of species interacting via pairwise, random interactions and deterministic, concentration limiting self-interaction are studied analytically with tools of equilibrium statistical mechanics…
We review recent work aimed at modeling species extinction over geological time. We discuss a number of models which, rather than dealing with the direct causes of particular extinction events, attempt to predict overall statistical trends,…
We develop a mathematical model of extinction and coexistence in a generic predator-prey ecosystem composed of two herbivores in asymmetrical competition and a hunter exerting a predatory pressure on both species. With the aim of…
The abundance of a species' population in an ecosystem is rarely stationary, often exhibiting large fluctuations over time. Using historical data on marine species, we show that the year-to-year fluctuations of population growth rate obey a…
We study the dynamics of a second-order difference equation that is derived from a planar Ricker model of two-stage (e.g. adult, juvenile) biological populations. We obtain sufficient conditions for global convergence to zero in the…
The 27 Myr periodicity in the fossil extinction record has been confirmed in modern data bases dating back 500 Myr, which is twice the time interval of the original analysis from thirty years ago. The surprising regularity of this period…
Using Monte Carlo simulations we study a lattice model of a prey-predator system. We show that in the three-dimensional model populations of preys and predators exhibit coherent periodic oscillations but such a behaviour is absent in…
A class of models for large-scale evolution and mass extinctions is presented. These models incorporate environmental changes on all scales, from influences on a single species to global effects. This is a step towards a unified picture of…
We study a model of a multi-species ecosystem described by Lotka-Volterra-like equations. Interactions among species form a network whose evolution is determined by the dynamics of the model. Numerical simulations show power-law…
Analysis of two independent data sets with increased taxonomic resolution (genera rather than families) using the revised 2012 time scale reveals that an extinction periodicity first detected by Raup and Sepkoski (1984) for only the…