Discuss evolution reading group

Tangled Web papers

Readings provided by Martin Hely

These are papers about a model known as "tangled nature". Basically, they consider a large set of potential "species" where every pair of species has some randomly-determined interaction (mutualist, predator-prey, competition, or no interaction at all) AND there are mutations which can transform an individual of one of the species into one of another species. For appropriately chosen parameters, this model exhibits lengthy epochs where the makeup of the community is roughly constant, but with occasional periods of re-organization. In complex systems jargon, it exhibits punctuated equilibrium as an "emergent property".

Christensen et al. is the original presentation of the model. Laird, Lawson & Jensen give a run-down of the basic model and some of the variations that have arisen. Jensen 2004 pushes the model into the physics literature (as part of a memorial issue to Per Bak). Lipowski and Schwämmle & Brigatti are examples from physics journals of models related to tangled nature and I've included them more to stimulate discussion on the phenomenon of apparently rather substantial biological conclusions appearing in physics journals.

http://www.uq.edu.au/biohumanities/readings/christensenetal2002.pdf
http://www.uq.edu.au/biohumanities/readings/jensen2004.pdf
http://www.uq.edu.au/biohumanities/readings/lairdlawsonjensen.pdf
http://www.uq.edu.au/biohumanities/readings/lipowski2005.pdf
http://www.uq.edu.au/biohumanities/readings/schwaemmlebrigatti.pdf

posted by John S. Wilkins @ 3:33 PM