Selection principles for Gaia

Arthur, Rangel; Nicholson, Arwen

doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2021.110940

Cited by 13 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…The SSM games are reminiscent of the Polya Urn model, though have not been studied before to our knowledge. The quantity of interest will be the expected face value at time t. The names chosen are based on the discussion in the Introduction and follow the conventions of [3] and [4]. Our version of Selection By Survival is much simpler than the (mostly verbal) models proposed by others e.g.…”

Section: Sequential Selection (Ss)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Relatively recent discussion about the persistence of life over long periods has brought to the fore various selection principles [1,2,3,4]. With the recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope [5,6] these questions not only have important implications for our understanding of Earth history, but also for the search for other inhabited planets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In [13,4] we argue for a refinement of this algorithm, emphasising that the resets are'near fatal i.e. the evolutionary innovations developed during the previous stable period are not completely lost.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A variety of abstract models of varying complexity have been proposed to explore these selection principles e.g. [1,14,15,4,16]. Though these models have great value, it can sometimes be unclear which of their features are programmed in (as alleged by [11] of the famous Daisyworld [17] model) and which are emergent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does Gaia Play Dice? : Simple Models of non-Darwinian Selection

Arthur¹,

Nicholson²

2023

Preprint

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In this paper we introduce some simple models, based on rolling dice, to explore mechanisms proposed to explain planetary habitability. The idea is to study these selection mechanisms in an analytically tractable setting, isolating their consequences from other details which can confound or obscure their effect in more realistic models. We find that while the observable of interest, the face value shown on the die, 'improves' over time in all models, for two of the more popular ideas: Selection by Survival and Sequential Selection, this is down to sampling effects. A modified version of Sequential Selection, Sequential Selection with Memory, implies a statistical tendency for systems to improve over time. We discuss the implications of this and its relationship to the ideas of the 'inhabitance paradox' and the 'Gaian bottleneck'.

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Section: Sequential Selection (Ss)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does Gaia Play Dice? : Simple Models of non-Darwinian Selection

Arthur¹,

Nicholson²

2023

Preprint

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“…Therefore exploring more complex biospheres will be a necessary step in increasing the applicability of this approach to potentially inhabited exoplanets. Additionally, abstract models of ecology predict that higher diversity ecosystems will on average persist for longer than low diversity ecosystems (Christensen et al 2002;Arthur & Nicholson 2022). This would make it statistically more likely to observe biosignatures produced by complex ecosystems rather than simple ones increasing the importance of modeling these scenarios.…”

Section: Next Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting biosignatures for nutrient limited biospheres

Nicholson¹,

Daines²,

Mayne³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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With the characterisations of potentially habitable planetary atmospheres on the horizon, the search for biosignatures is set to become a major area of research in the coming decades. To understand the atmospheric characteristics that might indicate alien life we must understand the abiotic characteristics of a planet and how life interacts with its environment. In the field of biogeochemistry, sophisticated models of life-environment coupled systems demonstrate that many assumptions specific to Earth-based life, e.g. specific ATP maintenance costs, are unnecessary to accurately model a biosphere. We explore a simple model of a single-species microbial biosphere that produces 𝐶𝐻 4 as a byproduct of the microbes' energy extraction -known as a type I biosignature. We demonstrate that although significantly changing the biological parameters has a large impact on the biosphere's total population, such changes have only a minimal impact on the strength of the resulting biosignature, while the biosphere is limited by 𝐻 2 availability. We extend the model to include more accurate microbial energy harvesting and show that adjusting microbe parameters can lead to a regime change where the biosphere becomes limited by energy availability and no longer fully exploits the available 𝐻 2 , impacting the strength of the resulting biosignature. We demonstrate that, for a nutrient limited biosphere, identifying the limiting nutrient, understanding the abiotic processes that control its abundance, and determining the biospheres ability to exploit it, are more fundamental for making type I biosignature predictions than the details of the population dynamics of the biosphere.

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Alternatives: Regional Ecological Communities

Davis

2022

Whole Earth

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Selection principles for Gaia

Cited by 13 publications

References 75 publications

Does Gaia Play Dice? : Simple Models of non-Darwinian Selection

Does Gaia Play Dice? : Simple Models of non-Darwinian Selection

Predicting biosignatures for nutrient limited biospheres

Alternatives: Regional Ecological Communities

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