The role of spontaneous pattern formation in the creation and maintenance of
biological diversity
Hiroki Sayama*, Les Kaufman*,+ and Yaneer Bar-Yam*
*New England Complex Systems Institute
24 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
+Boston University, Department of Biology
5 Cummington St., Boston, MA 02215, USA
sayama@necsi.org /
lesk@bu.edu /
yaneer@necsi.org
Submitted to the InterJournal
(manuscript no. 417) and
presented at the International Conference on Complex
Systems, Nashua, New Hampshire, May 2000.
Abstract
We show that in the presense of disruptive selection,
spatial distributions of sexually reproducing organisms with local
mating neighborhoods give rise to symmetry breaking and spontaneous
pattern formation in the genetic composition of local populations.
Global dynamics follows conventional coarsening of systems with
non-conserved order parameters in statistical physics. These patterns
interact with boundary and internal barrier structures so as to
generate counter-intuitive increases in diversity in patches with high
perimeter-to-core ratios. The results have significant implications
for the creation and maintenance of biological diversity and species
formation.
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