Evolutionary Life Cycles Research Articles

Regeneration Abilities among Extant Animals Depend on Their Evolutionary History and Life Cycles.

The present brief manuscript summarizes the main points supporting recently proposed hypotheses explaining the different distributions of regenerative capacity among invertebrates and vertebrates. The new hypotheses are based on the evolution of regeneration from marine animals to the terrestrial animals derived from them. These speculations suggest that animals that were initially capable of broad regeneration in the sea underwent epigenetic modifications during terrestrial adaptation that determined the loss of their regenerative abilities in sub-aerial conditions. These changes derived from the requirements of life on land that include variable dry and UV-exposed conditions. Terrestrial conditions do not allow for organ regeneration, especially in arthropods and amniotes. Nematodes, the other main metazoan group unable of regeneration, instead evolved eutely (a fixed number of body cells), a process which is incompatible with regeneration. All these changes involved gene loss, modification and new gene interactions within the genomes of terrestrial adapting animals that gave rise to sophisticated invertebrates and vertebrates adapted to living on land but with low cellular plasticity.

Agent-based modeling and life cycle dynamics of COVID-19-related online collective actions

The outbreak of COVID-19 has greatly threatened global public health and produced social problems, which includes relative online collective actions. Based on the life cycle law, focusing on the life cycle process of COVID-19 online collective actions, we carried out both macro-level analysis (big data mining) and micro-level behaviors (Agent-Based Modeling) on pandemic-related online collective actions. We collected 138 related online events with macro-level big data characteristics, and used Agent-Based Modeling to capture micro-level individual behaviors of netizens. We set two kinds of movable agents, Hots (events) and Netizens (individuals), which behave smartly and autonomously. Based on multiple simulations and parametric traversal, we obtained the optimal parameter solution. Under the optimal solutions, we repeated simulations by ten times, and took the mean values as robust outcomes. Simulation outcomes well match the real big data of life cycle trends, and validity and robustness can be achieved. According to multiple criteria (spans, peaks, ratios, and distributions), the fitness between simulations and real big data has been substantially supported. Therefore, our Agent-Based Modeling well grasps the micro-level mechanisms of real-world individuals (netizens), based on which we can predict individual behaviors of netizens and big data trends of specific online events. Based on our model, it is feasible to model, calculate, and even predict evolutionary dynamics and life cycles trends of online collective actions. It facilitates public administrations and social governance.

Interacting cells driving the evolution of multicellular life cycles.

Evolution of complex multicellular life began from the emergence of a life cycle involving the formation of cell clusters. The opportunity for cells to interact within clusters provided them with an advantage over unicellular life forms. However, what kind of interactions may lead to the evolution of multicellular life cycles? Here, we combine evolutionary game theory with a model for the emergence of multicellular groups to investigate how cell interactions can influence reproduction modes during the early stages of the evolution of multicellularity. In our model, the presence of both cell types is maintained by stochastic phenotype switching during cell division. We identify evolutionary optimal life cycles as those which maximize the population growth rate. Among all interactions captured by two-player games, the vast majority promotes two classes of life cycles: (i) splitting into unicellular propagules or (ii) fragmentation into two offspring clusters of equal (or almost equal) size. Our findings indicate that the three most important characteristics, determining whether multicellular life cycles will evolve, are the average performance of homogeneous groups, heterogeneous groups, and solitary cells.

A fundamental test for stellar feedback recipes in galaxy simulations

Direct comparisons between galaxy simulations and observations that both reach scales < 100 pc are strong tools to investigate the cloud-scale physics of star formation and feedback in nearby galaxies. Here we carry out such a comparison for hydrodynamical simulations of a Milky Way-like galaxy, including stochastic star formation, HII region and supernova feedback, and chemical post-processing at 8 pc resolution. Our simulation shows excellent agreement with almost all kpc-scale and larger observables, including total star formation rates, radial profiles of CO, HI, and star formation through the galactic disc, mass ratios of the ISM components, both whole-galaxy and resolved Kennicutt-Schmidt relations, and giant molecular cloud properties. However, we find that our simulation does not reproduce the observed de-correlation between tracers of gas and star formation on < 100 pc scales, known as the star formation 'uncertainty principle', which indicates that observed clouds undergo rapid evolutionary lifecycles. We conclude that the discrepancy is driven by insufficiently-strong pre-supernova feedback in our simulation, which does not disperse the surrounding gas completely, leaving star formation tracer emission too strongly associated with molecular gas tracer emission, inconsistent with observations. This result implies that the cloud-scale de-correlation of gas and star formation is a fundamental test for feedback prescriptions in galaxy simulations, one that can fail even in simulations that reproduce all other macroscopic properties of star-forming galaxies.

Toward a new (evolutionary) economics of sports

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a new classification of rules-driven sports and technology-driven sports that suggests different models of how sports develop. This paper outlines some key aspects of an evolutionary view of sports economics research and, separately, an institutional view of sports economic research.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a conceptual/theoretical piece rather than an empirical analysis of a research question. The authors scaffold a proposed analytic framework that is a combination of evolutionary economics and new institutional economics.FindingsA new dynamic approach to the study of sports industries is called for. The authors observe that sports and sports industries exhibit dynamic qualities but in the study of sports there is no analogue of “industrial dynamics” as in economics. What is missing is the field of “evolutionary sports dynamics.” To build this, the authors frame a new evolutionary approach to the study of the sports economy and sports industries – by examining the evolution of sports, their industries, and the complex industrial ecosystems they operate in, through the lens of institutional and evolutionary economics.Originality/valueThe paper establishes a theoretical basis for a “New Economics of Sports” – as a shift in the types of questions that sports economics seeks to answer. These are away from “sports statics” – as a branch of applied economics of industrial organization and optimal allocation of sports resources (ala Rottenberg, 1956; Neale, 1964) – and toward concern with the economics of “sports dynamics.” The prime questions are less with the optimal organization of existing sports, and more toward understanding the origin of new sports and the evolutionary life cycles of sports.

Genome size evolution in macroparasites

Reduction in genome size has been associated not only with a parasitic lifestyle in intracellular microparasites but also in some macroparasitic insects and nematodes. We collected the available data on genome size for flatworms, annelids, nematodes and arthropods, compared those with available data for the phylogenetically closest free-living taxa and found evidence of smaller genome sizes for parasites in six of nine comparisons. Our results suggest that despite great differences in evolutionary history and life cycles, parasitism as a lifestyle promotes convergent genome size reduction in macroparasites. We discuss factors that could be associated with small genome size in parasites which require further exploration in the future.

Toward a new “Fractals-General Science”

A recent study has shown that everywhere real systems follow common “fractals-general stacking behavior” during their change pathways (or evolutionary life cycles). This fact leads to the emergence of the new discipline “Fractals-General Science” as a mother-discipline (and acting as upper umbrella) of existing natural and applied sciences to commonly handle their fractals-general change behavior. It is, therefore, the main targets of this short communication are to present the motives, objectives, relations with other existing sciences, and the development map of such new science. It is discussed that there are many foreseen illustrative applications in geology, archeology, astronomy, life sciences, ecology, environmental science, hydrology, agronomy, engineering, materials sciences, chemistry, nanotechnology, biology, medicine, psychiatry, sociology, humanities, education, and arts that could effectively lead the implementation and experimentation of such new science. It is highlighted that the new “Fractals-General Science” could provide through multi-stacking representations the necessary platforms for investigating interactions and mutual changes between real life systems belonging to several sciences and disciplines. Examples are handling problems of the processing of basic formation and changes of matter and substances, propagation of combined corrosion, creep, fatigue and sedimentation of engineering and industrial systems, and the progressing of humans’ evolutionary life cycles.

Algae

Algae frequently get a bad press. Pond slime is a problem in garden pools, algal blooms can produce toxins that incapacitate or kill animals and humans and even the term seaweed is pejorative - a weed being a plant growing in what humans consider to be the wrong place. Positive aspects of algae are generally less newsworthy - they are the basis of marine food webs, supporting fisheries and charismatic marine megafauna from albatrosses to whales, as well as consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Here we consider what algae are, their diversity in terms of evolutionary origin, size, shape and life cycles, and their role in the natural environment and in human affairs.

Methodology for an organisational development process: An integral and sustainable qualitative transformation of complex inter-institutional networks, working on social and environmental problem situations

An organisational development methodology (ODM) of transformation is being designed to carry out radical changes in a small number of complex networks of organisations or organisational ecosystems. They are collaborating on a regional systemic change towards a sustainable and integral quality of life. The complex organisational networks have a combination of private, public and social institutions. The public and private organisations have a traditional vertical form of organisation, in contrast with some of the social organisations that have a flat form of structure, such as NGO environmental networks. We are working on three organisational networks, one has a local aim, another a national scope and the third one a continental dimension. At the end of this article, we show as a case study the first one of these organisational networks. The ODM has different stages of transformation, devised as evolutionary Life Cycles (Peon 1996): These stages of the ODM are conceived as an action-research systemic process of planned change, aimed to improve the efficiency of the organisational model under the conceptual guidelines of the Ecosystemic Metaphor. The strategic intervention has technical, economic, social, cultural, political and environmental dimensions. In each stage of the long-term intervention process, there is a careful selection of the most relevant issues. This is a simplistic description of a complex nonlinear process of change.

The evolutionary life cycles of non‐governmental development organizations

AbstractThis article argues that non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) active in community development exhibit different organizational characteristics at different phases of their evolution. Being able to recognize the characteristic descriptive elements of the different phases of organizational development better positions one to understand the nature of an NGO's relationship with donors, beneficiaries and the world around it. Perhaps more importantly, recognizing what phase of its organizational development cycle an NGO is in will assist the practitioner to understand the types of problems the NGO may be facing, their cause and the range of options available for problem resolution.