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Measuring the Structure, Composition, and Change of Underwater Environments with Large-area Imaging

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Aging by Near-Extinctions in Many-Variable Interacting Populations.

Thibaut Arnoulx de Pirey¹, Guy Bunin¹

¹Department of Physics, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.

Physical Review Letters

|March 17, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Many-species ecosystems often show near-extinction events and aging. This study introduces a solvable model demonstrating that random interactions generically cause aging, with populations near extinction for extended periods.

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Theoretical Ecology
Statistical Mechanics

Background:

Many-species ecosystem models like Lotka-Volterra predict near-extinction events.
These near-extinction processes are often associated with a slowdown in population dynamics, termed aging.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the link between near-extinction phenomena and aging in ecological systems.
To introduce and analyze an exactly solvable model of many-species interactions.

Main Methods:

Developed an exactly solvable many-variable model for population dynamics.
Incorporated random interactions between populations.
Analyzed the behavior of population sizes near zero and maximal values over time.

Main Results:

Aging emerges generically in the model when random interactions are present.
Population sizes remain exponentially close to absorbing states (near-extinction or maximal size) for extended durations.
Demonstrated rapid transitions between these population states.

Conclusions:

Random interactions are a key mechanism driving aging in many-species ecosystems.
The aging mechanism involves evolution near unstable fixed points, differing from glassy systems.
The model provides a framework for understanding complex ecological dynamics and population persistence.