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

6. Dynamic Fractal Network Ecosystems

Miele, Vincent and Catherine Matias. Revealing the Hidden Structure of Dynamic Ecological Networks. arXiv:1701.01335. University of Lyon and University of Paris Diderot biomathematicians conceive a method by which to discern nature’s vital, interactive relations between creatures and environs, which are not readily perceptible by a particulate focus.

Recent technological advances and long-term data studies provide interaction data that can be modelled through dynamic networks, i.e a sequence of different snapshots of an evolving ecological network. Most often time is the parameter along which these networks evolve but any other one-dimensional gradient (temperature, altitude, depth, humidity) could be considered. Here we propose a statistical tool to analyse the underlying structure of these networks and follow its evolution dynamics. It consists in extracting the main features of these networks and summarise them into a high-level view. We analyse a dynamic animal contact network and a seasonal food web and in both cases we show that our approach allows for the identification of a backbone organisation as well as interesting temporal variations at the individual level. (Abstract)

Montiglio, Puerre-Olivier, et al. Nested Interaction Networks Represent a Missing Link in the Study of Behavioural and Community Ecology. arXiv:1804.00927. The six person team has postings in Canada, Germany, USA and the UK, and cites themselves as an EcoEvoInteract Scientific Network. When we began this section around 2000, complex ecosystem patterns were sparsely evident and not well quantified. Network theories were in early stages, and not widely applied. This posting in the later 2010s is a good example of their pervasive utility as flora and fauna become treated just the same as physiologies. For example, an illustration displays wholes within wholes from genes to phenotypes to populations, via a typical node-link reciprocity.

Interactions are ubiquitous across biological systems. These interactions can be abstracted as patterns of connections among distinct units which form a hierarchy of biological organisation: gene and protein networks shape phenotypic traits and together constitute individuals, individuals are embedded within populations, populations within communities, and communities within ecosystems. The concept of nested biological networks is implicit in a variety of disciplines ranging from the study of genetic circuits regulating phenotypic trait expression, to the study of predator-prey interactions influencing community composition. Here, we formalise nested networks as having nodes that can contain, or be embedded in, other nodes, and where edges can bridge connections between sets of embedded nodes. We focus on two phenomena in particular: (i) indirect connections among units can arise from the structure of connections at higher or lower levels of organisation, (ii) the propagation of effects across neighbouring hierarchical levels of organization. (Abstract)

Montoya, Jose and Ricard Sole. Small World Patterns in Food Webs. Journal of Theoretical Biology. 214/3, 2002. The property of complex networks to develop a power-law distribution of interlinked nodes is here shown to apply for dynamic ecosystem communities.

Mouillot, David, et al. The Fractal Model. OIKOS. 90/3, 2000. An exploration of a self-similar geometry which can be applied to characterize species abundance and distribution.

Nathan, Marco. Molecular Ecosystems. Biology & Philosophy. Online September, 2013. A University of Denver philosopher traces in the recent literature how the term “ecosystem” is used in an analogous way for life’s other, often much removed, scalar phases such as biomolecular phenomena. Nathan avers that this is a valid metaphor for living systems which repeat their form and function, patterns and processes, at each sequential domain. Thus it is fair to enter a “microcosm – macrocosm” identity, along with a similar tendency to “individuation” at each nested instance. To note once more, as such a holistic purview becomes possible, all evolution and each organism do indeed reveal a necessary reiteration and recapitulation, as intuited by every age and culture.

In sum, we can distinguish between two models of ecosystem individuation: a physiognomic approach – which begins with a preliminary circumscription of the system and then works “inwards” to explore the ecological structure of the territory – and a component-specific approach, which starts by selecting the population(s) of reference and then works “outwards,” looking at their distribution and the totality of their interactions. Recent advances in genetics and molecular biology revealed that development is the product of a series of discrete and interacting modules, which allow the tinkering of finely-tuned and complex processes without wreaking havoc to the entire organism. I argue that our two modes of ecological individuation – physiognomic and component-specific – correspond to two distinct strategies for individuating developmental modules. (6)

In sum, I distinguished between two modes of individuation. The first, physiognomic mode, circumscribes a system in terms of physical discontinuities. The second, component-specific, mode focuses on the distribution and activity of selected populations embedded within a larger system, allowing a more fine-grained individuation of units, even in the absence of real or alleged “natural boundaries.” These two approaches can be employed both in ecology and in molecular-developmental biology. (8) A further analogy between the macrocosm and the microcosm emerges as soon as we switch from ecosystem ecology to a different biological subfiels: community ecology. (8)

The aim of this article was to analyze striking resemblance between the cellular environment and the biosphere. In the first part, I focused on three analogies between the ecological macrocosm and the molecular microcosm. First, I distinguished two approaches for the individuation of ecological and molecular systems – physiognomic and component-specific. Second, I showed that molecular environments display several processes and interactions characteristic of ecological communities, such as competition, predation, mutualism, and metabolic cooperation. (9)

Naveh, Zev. Ten Major Premises for a Holistic Conception of Multifunctional Landscapes. Landscape and Urban Planning. 57/3-4, 2001. A veteran ecologist lists the salient features of self-organizing systems which by their natural ubiquity can guide the transition to a sustainable society.

Such a revolution was initiated by a major paradigm shift from parts to wholes and from entirely reductionistic and mechanistic approaches to more holistic and organismic ones. It shifted from breaking down, analyzing and fragmenting wholes into smaller and smaller particles towards new trends for integration, synthesis and complementarity…These should also be the properties of sustainable societies, their economy and landscapes in the emerging post-industrial information society. It constitutes a major transdisciplinary paradigm shift from the neo-Darwinian conception of evolution to an all-embracing conception of synthetic cosmic, geological, biological and cultural co-evolution. (271)

Nielsen, S. N. Thermodynamics of an Ecosystem Interpreted as a Hierarchy of Embedded Systems. Ecological Modelling. 135/2-3, 2000. An integration of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and network perspectives.

Niwa, Hiro-Sato. Power-law Scaling in Dimension-to-Biomass Relationship of Fish Schools. Journal of Theoretical Biology. 235/3, 2005. As another microcosm which exemplifies nature’s mathematical universality.

Motivated by the finding that there is some biological universality in the relationship between school geometry and school biomass of various pelagic fishes in various conditions, I here establish a scaling law for school dimensions: the school diameter increases as a power-law function of school biomass. (419)

Norberg, Jon. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning: A Complex Adaptive Systems Approach. Limnology and Oceanography. 49/4, Part 2, 2004. From a supplement issue on Planktonic Biodiversity: Scaling Up and Down, a case that CAS theory can explain how dynamic spatial hierarchies form from individual entities which locally interact. Also in the same issue: Leibold, Mathew and Jon Norberg. Biodiversity in Metacommunities: Plankton as Complex Adaptive systems?

Nordbotten, Jan, et al. Ecological and Evolutionary Dynamics of Interconnectedness and Modularity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115/750, 2018. This paper by senior scientists Nordbotten (University of Bergen, Norway) Simon Levin, Eors Szathmary and Nils Stenseth, reviewed by David Krakauer and Gunter Wagner, achieves a latest affirmation of animal interactivities within modular groupings as a pervasive, structural way that living systems evolve, sustain and prevail.

We develop a theoretical framework for linking microprocesses (i.e., population dynamics and evolution through natural selection) with macrophenomena (such as interconnectedness and modularity within an ecological system). This is achieved by developing a measure of interconnectedness for population distributions defined on a trait space, in combination with an evolution equation for the population distribution. With this contribution, we provide a platform for understanding under what environmental, ecological, and evolutionary conditions ecosystems evolve toward being more or less modular. Thus we are able to decompose the overall driver of changes at the macro level (such as interconnectedness) into three components: (i) ecologically driven change, (ii) evolutionarily driven change, and (iii) environmentally driven change. (Abstract)

O’Dwyer, James. The Hidden Laws of Ecosystems. Nautilus. Online October, 2015. While a tacit mindset in this endeavor is seen to set aside or deny universal principles and patterns such as physics admits, a University of Illinois theoretical ecologist contends that attention to their actual presence can advance the field. An increasing number of studies, lately aided by genetic info, are indeed finding a reliable persistence, such as UC Berkeley’s John Harte (search) about species and spatial areas. O’Dywer is a contributor along with 15 coauthors including Jennifer Dunne, John Harte, and Geoffrey West to a manifesto On Theory in Ecology in Bioscience (Pablo Marquet, et al, July 2014)

Power laws are common in science, and are the defining feature of universality in physics. They describe the strength of magnets as temperature increases, earthquake frequency versus size, and city productivity as a function of population. For many ecologists, the species-area curve strikes a nerve. It suggests that at a large enough scale, the specific detail of an ecosystem—the “entangled bank” that lies so near and dear to the ecologist’s heart—simply doesn’t matter. The idiosyncrasies wash out, and ecological systems start to look surprisingly similar to a broad swathe of disparate systems in other sciences.

Olesen, Jens, et al. The Modularity of Pollination Networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104/19891, 2007. An analysis of a large database of some 10,000 cases of mutualistic plant-animal interactions demonstrates a constant formation of modular components. An understanding of critical nodes in such webs can then aid efforts to preserve biodiversity.

The omnipresence of modularity and other structural properties, e.g., nestedness, in large pollination networks may change our view on the structuring of biodiversity. Our study shows that modules are small blocks of species, candidating as manageable study objects, and that their study may bridge evolutionary and functional ecology. (19894)

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