Emergence of species and punctuated equilibrium in the Tangle Nature model of biological evolution

We consider an individual-based model of evolution. Species emergence as segregation of the population on to discrete positions in a hyper-cubical genotype space. The model emphasises interaction between coexisting genotypes. Although the rate of the micro-dynamics, consisting of reproduction and killing of individuals is essentially constant, the macro-dynamics is punctuated. The macro-evolution consists of the creation and annihilation of configurations in genotype space equivalent to sequences of different ecosystems. We review the definition of the model and results concerning distribution lifetimes of individuals, genotypes and configurations. We discuss the non-stationarity of the model and how this agrees with the fossil record. Finally, we describe how the model is able to produce species abundance distributions of a form qualitatively in agreement with observation on real ecosystems.

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