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Entropy Production in Ecosystems

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Advances in Artificial Life (ECAL 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 4648))

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Abstract

We present an extremely minimal ecosystem model which takes account of thermodynamic constraints on the organisms’ metabolism. This suggests a way to test the application of a hypothesised principle of Maximum Entropy Production to ecosystems. It also puts definite physical bounds on the rates at which matter can flow through the system and paves the way for more detailed models that have thermodynamic principles built in from the start. In providing the background for this model we point out some connections between thermodynamic principles and autopoiesis.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Nathaniel Virgo & Inman Harvey

Authors
  1. Nathaniel Virgo
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  2. Inman Harvey
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Editor information

Fernando Almeida e Costa Luis Mateus Rocha Ernesto Costa Inman Harvey AntĂłnio Coutinho

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© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Virgo, N., Harvey, I. (2007). Entropy Production in Ecosystems. In: Almeida e Costa, F., Rocha, L.M., Costa, E., Harvey, I., Coutinho, A. (eds) Advances in Artificial Life. ECAL 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4648. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74913-4_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74913-4_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74912-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74913-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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