相关论文: How large should whales be?

We present a stochastic model for the size of a taxon in paleobiology, in which we allow for the evolution of new taxon members, and both individual and catastrophic extinction events. The model uses ideas from the theory of birth and death…

Evolutionary hypotheses to explain the greater numbers of species in the tropics than the temperate zone include greater age and area, higher temperature and metabolic rates, and greater ecological opportunity. These ideas make contrasting…

As a result of climate change, many populations have to modify their range to follow the suitable areas - their "climate envelope" - often risking extinction. During this migration process, they may face absolute boundaries to dispersal,…

A natural similarity in body dimensions of terrestrial animals noticed by ancient philosophers remains the main key to the problem of mammalian skeletal evolution with body mass explored in theoretical and experimental biology and tested by…

A mathematical model of interacting species filling ecological niches left by the extinction of others is introduced. Species organize themselves into genera of all sizes. The size of a genus on average grows linearly with its age,…

Life systems are complex and hierarchical, with diverse components at different scales, yet they sustain themselves, grow, and evolve over time. How can a theory of such complex biological states be developed? Here we note that for a…

Scaling laws illuminate Nature's fundamental biological principles and guide bioinspired materials and structural designs. In simple cases they are based on the fundamental principle that all laws of nature remain unchanged (i.e.,…

Constraints on changes in expression levels across all cell components imposed by the steady growth of cells have recently been discussed both experimentally and theoretically. By assuming a small environmental perturbation and considering…

A secondary function of the mammals' respiratory system is during inspiration to heat the air to body temperature and to saturate it with water before it reaches the alveoli. Relying on a mathematical model, we comprehensively analyze this…

Modeling fish growth is an important research topic in ecological and fishery sciences because body weight statistics directly affect the total biomass of fish in a habitat, which in turn affects their population dynamics. Many models of…

This paper investigates the role of size in biological organisms. More specifically, how the energy demand, expressed by the metabolic rate, changes according to the mass of an organism. Empirical evidence suggests a power-law relation…

Predicting evolution of expanding populations is critical to control biological threats such as invasive species and cancer metastasis. Expansion is primarily driven by reproduction and dispersal, but nature abounds with examples of…

The theory of evolution by natural selection cannot be used to evaluate the truth value of the following proposition: Through evolution, there exists at least one species that can adapt to any one given environment. To address this issue,…

Production of energy is a foundation of life. Metabolic rate of organisms (amount of energy produced per unit time) generally increases slower than organisms' mass, which has important implications for life organization. This phenomenon,…

Fluctuations in diversity and extinction sizes are discussed and compared for two different, individual-based models of biological coevolution. Both models display power-law distributions for various quantities of evolutionary interest,…

Taylor's Law (TL) relates the variance to the mean of a random variable via power law. In ecology it applies to populationsand it is a common empirical pattern shared among different ecosystems. Measurements give power law exponent to be…

Many species see their range shifted poleward in response to global warming and need to keep pace in order to survive. To understand the effect of climate change on species ranges and its consequences on population dynamics, we consider a…

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…

The adaptation rate in theoretical models of biological evolution increases with the mutation rate but only to a point when mutations into lethal states cause extinction. One would expect that removing such states should be beneficial for…

Macroevolution is considered as a problem of stochastic dynamics in a system with many competing agents. Evolutionary events (speciations and extinctions) are triggered by fitness records found by random exploration of the agents' fitness…