Related papers: Evolutionary ecology in-silico:evolving foodwebs, …
Both evolution and ecology have long been concerned with the impact of variable environmental conditions on observed levels of genetic diversity within and between species. We model the evolution of a quantitative trait under selection that…
We study a spatial cyclic predator-prey model with an even number of species (for n=4, 6, and 8) that allows the formation of two defective alliances consisting of the even and odd label species. The species are distributed on the sites of…
Population structure can be modelled by evolutionary graphs, which can have a substantial, but very subtle influence on the fate of the arising mutants. Individuals are located on the nodes of these graphs, competing with each other to…
An important challenge in theoretical ecology is to find good, coarse-grained representations of complex food webs. Here we use the approach of generalized modeling to show that it may be possible to formulate a coarse-graining algorithm…
Food webs represent the set of consumer-resource interactions among a set of species that co-occur in a habitat, but most food web studies have omitted parasites and their interactions. Recent studies have provided conflicting evidence on…
This is the first of two papers where we discuss the limits imposed by competition to the biodiversity of species communities. In this first paper we study the coexistence of competing species at the fixed point of population dynamic…
We analyze the properties of model food webs and of fifteen community food webs from a variety of environments. We first perform a theoretical analysis of the niche model of Williams and Martinez. We derive analytical expressions for the…
We analyze a model of interacting agents (e.g. prebiotic chemical species) which are represended by nodes of a network, whereas their interactions are mapped onto directed links between these nodes. On a fast time scale, each agent follows…
In this work we propose a physical model of organismal evolution, where phenotype, organism life expectancy, is directly related to genotype i.e. the stability of its proteins which can be determined exactly in the model. Simulating the…
Organisms modulate their fitness in heterogeneous environments by dispersing. Prior work shows that there is selection against "unconditional" dispersal in spatially heterogeneous environments. "Unconditional" means individuals disperse at…
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…
We study open-ended evolution by focusing on computational and information-processing dynamics underlying major evolutionary transitions. In doing so, we consider biological organisms as hierarchical dynamical systems that generate…
Species extinction occurs regularly and unavoidably in ecological systems. The time scales for extinction can broadly vary and inform on the ecosystem's stability. We study the spatio-temporal extinction dynamics of a paradigmatic…
In this paper we explore the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a predator-prey model, where the prey population is structured according to a certain life history trait. The trait distribution within the prey population is the result of interplay…
Evolution is the theory that plants and animals today have come from kinds that have existed in the past. Scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace dedicate their life to observe how species interact with their environment, grow,…
The structure of ecological networks, in particular food webs, determines their ability to evolve further, i.e. evolvability. The knowledge about how food web evolvability is determined by the structures of diverse ecological networks can…
Systems composed of distinct complex networks are present in many real-world environments, from society to ecological systems. In the present paper, we propose a network model obtained as a consequence of interactions between two species…
The analysis of some species-rich, well-defined food webs shows that they display the so called Small World behavior shared by a number of disparate complex systems. The three systems analysed (Ythan estuary web, Silwood web and the Little…
A novel mathematical framework is proposed to describe the ecological and evolutionary consequences of consumer--resource interactions. Both the consumer and resource are assumed to consist of several (sub)species, which interact between…
A robotic swarm that is required to operate for long periods in a potentially unknown environment can use both evolution and individual learning methods in order to adapt. However, the role played by the environment in influencing the…