V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An EarthWinian Genesis Synthesis

6. Dynamic Fractal Network Ecosystems

Vivaldo, Gianna, et al. Network of Plants: How to Measure Similarity in Vegetable Species. arXiv:1602.05887. IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca and University of Firenze researchers including Guido Caldarelli cleverly show how nonlinear dynamic network theories equally applies to, and is exemplified by all manner of flora plant families. This quality is evident, for one instance, in the botanical “diaspore” process of seed dispersals. In our worldwise 21st century, nature’s rife “entanglements” at last become amenable to mathematical explanation and resolve so as to reveal and affirm this universal testament.

Despite the common misconception of nearly static organisms, plants do interact continuously with the environment and with each other. It is fair to assume that during their evolution they developed particular features to overcome problems and to exploit possibilities from environment. In this paper we introduce various quantitative measures based on recent advancements in complex network theory that allow to measure the effective similarities of various species. By using this approach on the similarity in fruit-typology ecological traits we obtain a clear plant classification in a way similar to traditional taxonomic classification. This result is not trivial, since a similar analysis done on the basis of diaspore morphological properties do not provide any clear parameter to classify plants species. Complex network theory can then be used in order to determine which feature amongst many can be used to distinguish scope and possibly evolution of plants. (Abstract)

Ward, Ashley, et al. Quorum Decision-Making Facilitates Information Transfer in Fish Schools. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105/6948, 2008. An international team of theoretical ecologists including Ian Couzin, David Sumpter and Jens Krause report that the ‘quorum-sensing’ activity found to cohere bacterial communities (‘Wisdom of the crowds’ and ‘swarm intelligence’ is also cited.) is likewise present in groups of organisms. By such lights, a further complex adaptive feature is identified that occurs and repeats at every instance and scale.

This study shows that effective and accurate information transfer in groups may be gained only through nonlinear responses of group members to each other, thus highlighting the importance of quorum decision-making. (6948)

West, Geoffrey and James Brown. Life’s Universal Scaling Laws. Physics Today. September, 2004. A review of the theory that common properties of biological networks can explain the organization and dynamics of living systems.

Among the many fundamental variables that obey such scaling laws….are metabolic rate, life span, growth rate, heart rate, lengths of aortas and genomes, tree height, mass of cerebral grey matter, density of mitochondria, and concentration of RNA. (36) The starting point was to recognize that highly complex, self-sustaining, reproducing, living structures require close integration of enormous numbers of localized microscopic units that need to be serviced in an approximately “democratic” and efficient fashion. (38) Thus, growth and life-history events are, in general, universal phenomena governed primarily be basic cellular properties and quarter-power scaling. (40)

Wimberley, Edward. Nested Ecology: The Place of Humans in the Ecological Hierarchy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, for example, presciently saw an evolutionary advance of geological, biological, and cognitive spheres, versus the branching, twiggy bush that Darwinism claims. A Florida Gulf Coast University ecologist can now affirm the many appreciations of a deeply and truly nested nature appearing everywhere. Not a military or corporate “hierarchy,” more as Russian dolls or Chinese boxes, we find across natural ecosystems and societies open living, sentient systems that are sustained within each other. This emergent scale is traced in chapters from a Cosmic Ecology to Environmental, Social communities, and to Personal psychologies. Along the way a history of ecological theories and schools leads to novel recognitions of complementary wholes within wholes from microbes to civilizations. Wimberley contrasts this view with a “standard scientific cosmology” whose excessive reduction loses any such design, and favorably with “Christianity as a Religious Eco-cosmology” as due to St. Francis of Assisi and Teilhard, along with John Haught’s writings. From this salutary preamble is proposed a “Nested Ecological Householding” of benefit to the whole earth “…a supraorganism – a biospheric living entity” of which its human phase is part and participant.

Wu, Jianguo and Danielle Marceau. Modeling Complex Ecological Systems. Ecological Modelling. 153/1-2, 2002. An introduction to a double issue devoted to self-organizing, emergent ecosystems.

Yamazaki, Atsuko and Daniel Kamykowski. Modeling Plankton Behavior as a Complex Adaptive System. Seuront, Laurent and Peter Strutton. Handbook of Scaling Methods in Aquatic Ecology. Boca Rotan, FL: CRC Press, 2004. A further example of the ubiquitous apply of dynamical self-organization throughout the natural kingdom.

Complexity is the collective behavior of many basic but interacting units, and their interactions lead to coherent collective phenomena, which can be described only at levels higher than those of the individual units, but should emerge from the interaction among them. (544)

Young, I. M. and J. W. Crawford. Interactions and Self-Organization in the Soil-Microbe Complex. Science. 304/1634, 2004. An article for a special issue Soils – The Final Frontier, reports on many advances over the last decade which achieve a comprehensive image of earth’s fertile mantle as a dynamic, self-similar ecosystem.

In this picture, the functionality and dynamical behavior of soil emerges as a consequence of the interaction between the physical and biological processes as mediated by the structure of soil. The soil-microbe complex can be viewed as a self-organizing system capable of adapting to prevailing conditions. (1636)

Zaoli, Silvia, et al. Covariations in Ecological Scaling Laws Fostered by Community Dynamics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114/10672, 2017. As this section commenced in 2004, an agreed presence and discernment of endemic environmental patterns and processes was much in abeyance. Here École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and University di Padova (Amos Maritan) theorists contribute to a later 2010s affirmation that they indeed are much in place, and what kind of forms do they take. A commentary in the same issue Integrating Macroecology through a Statistical Mechanics of Adaptive Matter by Pablo Marquet notes the achievement.

Empirical laws portraying patterns in ecology are routinely observed in marine and terrestrial environments. Such patterns are recurrent but also show features that are distinctive of each ecosystem. For example, the number of species in an ecosystem increases with its area according to a well-defined mathematical law, but the rate of increase may vary across different ecosystem types. We show that different ecological patterns are linked to each other in a way that if one is changed, the others are affected as well. We verify our predictions on available empirical datasets and unravel yet unknown features of natural ecosystems, suggesting directions for empirical research. (Significance)

Zelnik, Yuval, et al. High-Integrity Human Intervention in Ecosystems: Tracking Self-Organization Modes. PLoS Computational Biology. September, 2021. Into the 2020s, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion University ecological theorists including Ehud Meron contend that a full appreciation and application of nature’s dynamic spontaneities complexities (the river bank is finally untangled and explained) can well inform and guide future mitigations (droughts, fires) and improvements (biodiversity, etc.)

Humans play major roles in shaping and transforming the ecology of Earth. Unlike natural drivers of ecosystem change, human interventions may involve planning and management, but often with detrimental results. Using model studies and aerial-image analysis, we argue that a successful management calls for an understanding of the dynamic self-organization modes that drive ecosystem change. We demonstrate this approach with two examples: grazing control in drought-prone ecosystems, and the rehabilitation of degraded vegetation by water harvesting. We show that spatially non-uniform grazing can aid a resilience to droughts, and that fragmental restoration along contour bands is better than vegetation stripes. (Abstract excerpt)

Zhang, WenJun, et al. Neural Network Modeling of Ecosystems. Ecological Modelling. 201/3-4, 2007. Another well-studied exemplar of complex, self-organizing systems, neural net geometries and interactions are of much service to explicate ultra-intricate, nested dynamic biotas, in this instance cabbage patch growth in China.

Zhao, Li-Xia, et al. The Shaping Role of Self-Organization: Linking Vegetation Patterning, Plant Traits and Ecosystem Functioning. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Vol.286/Iss.1900, 2019. When this section was first posted in the early 2000s, perceptions of self-organized natural complex dynamics were just beginning to dawn. A decade and a half later East China Normal University, Nanjing University, and Utrecht University ecologists contribute to recognitions of their broad scale, formative, beneficial presence. Notable factors in this achievement involve better (remote) sensing techniques, along with global research analysis and communications.

Self-organized spatial patterns are increasingly recognized for their contribution to ecosystem functioning, productivity, stability, and species diversity in terrestrial as well as marine ecosystems. Most studies of self-organization have focused on regular patterns. However, there is an abundance of patterns which are not strictly regular. Understanding of how they are formed and affect ecosystem function is crucial for the broad acceptance of self-organization in ecological theory. Field observations and experiments have revealed that self-organization involves a range of plant traits, including shoot-to-root ratio, rhizome orientation, node number and length, and enhances vegetation productivity. Moreover, patchiness in self-organized salt marshes can support a microhabitat for macrobenthos promoting a spatial heterogeneity of species richness. Our results extend existing concepts of self-organization and its effects on productivity and biodiversity to the spatial irregular patterns observed in many systems. (Abstract edits)

Zillio, Tommaso, et al. Incipient Criticality in Ecological Communities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105/18714, 2008. A team from Canada, the U. S., and Italy, that includes Jayanth Banavar, Jessica Green, John Harte, and Amos Maritan, finesses prior ‘relative species abundance’ and ‘species area relationship’ mathematics which were not able to discern a power-law scaling. A more generally applicable theory is now put forward that can indeed find this.

What is remarkable in critical phenomena is that, despite the immense variety of systems, there are just a few universality classes that depend only on essential features, such as the spatial dimensionality and the symmetry of the ordering. We find that, despite their apparent differences, the well-known fisher long series, the BCI forest, and the serpentine grassland have an underlying deep commonality and lie in the same university class. (18715)

Our work suggests that ecosystems are in a state of incipient criticality – they satisfy scaling relationships even in the absence of power-law behavior. This observation opens the attractive possibility of using the generalized scaling hypothesis as a model-independent means of linking ecological relationships beyond the species abundance relationship. (18716)

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