Related papers: Mass Extinctions vs. Uniformitarianism in Biologic…
The survival of natural populations may be greatly affected by environmental conditions that vary in space and time. We look at a population residing in two locations (patches) coupled by migration, in which the local conditions fluctuate…
Many of the mathematical frameworks describing natural selection are equivalent to Bayes Theorem, also known as Bayesian updating. By definition, a process of Bayesian Inference is one which involves a Bayesian update, so we may conclude…
We study a lattice model of a multi-species prey-predator system. Numerical results show that for a small mutation rate the model develops irregular long-period oscillatory behavior with sizeable changes in a number of species. The…
Given that extinction in a bisexual population is certain, we study a way to approximate the time when this extinction occurs. Our study is based on standard tools from Extreme Value Theory, which in practice are very easy to implement. We…
Finite-size fluctuations arising in the dynamics of competing populations may have dramatic influence on their fate. As an example, in this article, we investigate a model of three species which dominate each other in a cyclic manner.…
A few of the major mass extinctions of paleontology have recently been found to consist of two distinct extinction peaks at higher resolution. A viable explanation for this remains elusive. In this paper it is shown that the recently…
Planetary systems can evolve dynamically even after the planets themselves have fully formed, and there is circumstantial evidence that most planetary systems become unstable after the disappearance of the gaseous protoplanetary disk.…
A simple model of species origin resulted from dynamic features of a population, solely, is developed. The model is based on the evolution optimality in space distribution, and the selection is gone over the mobility. Some biological issues…
We introduce the Webworld model, which links together the ecological modelling of food web structure with the evolutionary modelling of speciation and extinction events. The model describes dynamics of ecological communities on an…
Culture evolves, not just in the trivial sense that cultures change over time, but also in the strong sense that such change is governed by Darwinian principles. Both biological and cultural evolution are essentially cumulative selection…
Published evidence for the human-mediated extinction of megafauna is examined and is found to be unsubstantiated. It is shown that the claimed evidence is not based on data describing the growth of human population but on the fabricated…
Ecological systems are complex dynamical systems. Modelling efforts on ecosystems' dynamical stability have revealed that population dynamics, being highly nonlinear, can be governed by complex fluctuations. Indeed, experimental and field…
Complex evolving systems such as the biosphere, ecosystems and societies exhibit sudden collapses, for reasons that are only partially understood. Here we study this phenomenon using a mathematical model of a system that evolves under…
For taxonomic levels higher than species, the abundance distributions of number of subtaxa per taxon tend to approximate power laws, but often show strong deviationns from such a law. Previously, these deviations were attributed to…
Nature's many varied complex systems (including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society) are islands of order within the increasingly disordered universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological or cultural evolution,…
The terrestrial fossil record shows a significant variation in the extinction and origination rates of species during the past half billion years. Numerous studies have claimed an association between this variation and the motion of the Sun…
Darwin's book, Origin of the Species has been a source of public controversy for more than hundred and fifty years. Court cases and mountains of words have not dispelled this controversy. In this paper, a quantitative approach using simple…
We develop a ``unified'' model that describes both ``micro'' and ``macro'' evolutions within a single theoretical framework. The eco-system is described as a dynamic network; the population dynamics at each node of this network describes…
What features characterise complex system dynamics? Power laws and scale invariance of fluctuations are often taken as the hallmarks of complexity, drawing on analogies with equilibrium critical phenomena[1-3]. Here we argue that slow,…
Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…