ON THE FRACTAL NATURE OF ECOLOGICAL AND MACROEVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS

Abstract

In recent studies, a new class of models dealing with evolutionary processes on the large timescale have shown that many of the general traits of the fossil record can be reproduced under some simple assumptions. Additionally, the study of living ecosystems and their network organization, as well as the time series analysis of population fluctuations, points in the direction that complex ecosystems are organized close to instability points where extinction of species and ecological turnover would be the rule. In this paper, we further explore these ideas and their implications for our understanding of evolution as a complex dynamical process with some universal features linked with network-level properties. In particular, a source for the decoupling between micro- and macroevolutionary mechanisms is provided.