Evolutionary ecology in silico: evolving food webs, migrating population and speciation

After a brief review of our recent works on “unified” models of evolutionary ecology, we have generalized our “unified” model by taking into account spatial variations from one “patch” to another. We model the spatial extension of the ecosystem (i.e., the geography) by a square lattice where each site corresponds to a distinct “patch”. A distinct self-organizing hierarchical food web describes the prey–predator relations at each patch in the ecosystem. By carrying out computer simulations up to 107 time steps, we found that, depending on the values of the set of parameters, the distribution of the lifetimes of the species can be fitted to power laws, but only over a very restricted regime of lifetimes. We also interpret our model in terms of taxonomy and present results to elucidate some evolutionary trends in genus, family, order, class, phylum, etc.

[1]  Dietrich Stauffer,et al.  Unified “micro”- and “macro-” evolution of eco-systems: self-organization of a dynamic network , 2003, cond-mat/0307046.

[2]  E. Mayr.  What Evolution Is , 2001 .

[3]  C. Quince,et al.  Deleting species from model food webs , 2004, q-bio/0401037.

[4]  B. Drossel,et al.  Modelling Food Webs , 2002, nlin/0202034.

[5]  D. Stauffer,et al.  Unification of small and large time scales for biological evolution: deviations from power law. , 2003, Physical review letters.

[6]  G. Polis,et al.  Food webs: integration of patterns and dynamics , 1997 .

[7]  Sergey Gavrilets,et al.  PERSPECTIVE: MODELS OF SPECIATION: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED IN 40 YEARS? , 2003, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[8]  Stefan Bornholdt,et al.  Handbook of Graphs and Networks: From the Genome to the Internet , 2003 .

[9]  Ben-Naim,et al.  Spatial organization in cyclic Lotka-Volterra systems. , 1996, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[10]  J. Thompson,et al.  The population biology of coevolution , 1998, Researches on Population Ecology.

[11]  Andrzej Pekalski,et al.  Dynamics of populations in a changing environment. , 2002, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[12]  Tomé,et al.  Stochastic lattice gas model for a predator-prey system. , 1994, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[13]  T. Frost.  Food Webs: Integration of Patterns and Dynamics , 1997 .

[14]  Tamás Czárán,et al.  Spatiotemporal models of population and community dynamics , 1998 .

[15]  P. A. Rikvold,et al.  Punctuated equilibria and 1/f noise in a biological coevolution model with individual-based dynamics. , 2003, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[16]  Karin Johst,et al.  Evolution of complex dynamics in spatially structured populations , 1999, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[17]  A Lipowski,et al.  Oscillatory behavior in a lattice prey-predator system. , 1999, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[18]  Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen,et al.  The tangled nature model as an evolving quasi-species model , 2003 .

[19]  Ricard V. Solé,et al.  Modeling spatiotemporal dynamics in ecology , 1998 .

[20]  Danuta Makowiec,et al.  Penna Model of Biological Aging on a Lattice , 2000 .

[21]  Stephen P Ellner,et al.  Evolution as a critical component of plankton dynamics , 2003, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[22]  D. Stauffer,et al.  Computer simulations of history of life: speciation, emergence of complex species from simpler organisms, and extinctions , 2003, q-bio/0311002.

[23]  T. Antal,et al.  Phase transitions and oscillations in a lattice prey-predator model. , 2000, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[24]  Tainaka.  Stationary pattern of vortices or strings in biological systems: Lattice version of the Lotka-Volterra model. , 1989, Physical review letters.

[25]  Dietrich Stauffer,et al.  Principles of Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics , 2000 .

[26]  S. Ellner,et al.  Rapid evolution drives ecological dynamics in a predator–prey system , 2003, Nature.

[27]  U. Dieckmann,et al.  On the origin of species by sympatric speciation , 1999, Nature.

[28]  Tadeusz Litak,et al.  The importance of being discrete , 2007 .

[29]  B. Drossel.  Biological evolution and statistical physics , 2001, cond-mat/0101409.

[30]  Peter Turchin,et al.  Ecology: Evolution in population dynamics , 2003, Nature.

[31]  S. Solomon,et al.  The importance of being discrete: life always wins on the surface. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[32]  Andrew P. Hendry,et al.  Contemporary evolution meets conservation biology , 2003 .

[33]  S. Carroll.  Chance and necessity: the evolution of morphological complexity and diversity , 2001, Nature.

[34]  Stanislaw Cebrat,et al.  Random Deaths in a Computational Model for Age-Structured Populations , 2000 .

[35]  J. N. Thompson,et al.  Rapid evolution as an ecological process. , 1998, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[36]  Stanislaw Cebrat,et al.  Random deaths in a computational model for age-structured populations , 2000, Theory in Biosciences.

[37]  T. Antal,et al.  Critical behavior of a lattice prey-predator model. , 2001, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[38]  Andrzej Pękalski,et al.  Population dynamics with or without evolution: a physicist's approach , 2004 .

[39]  Roblin,et al.  Automata network predator-prey model with pursuit and evasion. , 1994, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[40]  J. N. Thompson,et al.  The evolution of species interactions. , 1999, Science.

[41]  Dietrich Stauffer,et al.  Food-web based unified model of macro- and microevolution. , 2003, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[42]  Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen,et al.  Time-dependent extinction rate and species abundance in a tangled-nature model of biological evolution. , 2002, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[43]  Andrzej Pekalski,et al.  A short guide to predator-prey lattice models , 2004, Computing in Science & Engineering.

[44]  Charles M. Newman,et al.  Stochastic structure and nonlinear dynamics of food webs: qualitative stability in a Lotka-Volterra cascade model , 1990, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. B. Biological Sciences.