. 

Finally out of reach- 

No bondage, no dependency. 

How calm the ocean, 

Towering the void. 

 

Tessho

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New Light on the Dawn: a new perspective on the Neolithic Revolution in Southwest Asia

Trevor Watkins

 

 Jan Mankes

 

GÖBEKLI TEPE REVEALED: What we know in 2022 

Dr. Lee Clare

Fingerprints of High-Dimensional Coexistence in Complex Ecosystems  

Barbier et al., 2021.

The coexistence of many competing species in an ecological community is a long-standing theoretical and empirical puzzle. Classic approaches in ecology assume that species fitness and interactions in a given environment are mainly driven by a few essential species traits, and coexistence can be explained by trade-offs between these traits. The apparent diversity of species is then summarized by their positions (“ecological niches”) in a low-dimensional trait space. Yet, in a complex community, any particular set of traits and trade-offs is unlikely to encompass the full organization of the community. A diametrically opposite approach assumes that species interactions are disordered, i.e., essentially random, as might arise when many species traits combine in complex ways. This approach is appealing theoretically, and can lead to novel emergent phenomena, fundamentally different from the picture painted by low-dimensional theories. Nonetheless, fully disordered interactions are incompatible with many-species coexistence, and neither disorder nor its dynamical consequences have received direct empirical support so far. Here we ask what happens when random species interactions are minimally constrained by coexistence. We show theoretically that this leads to testable predictions. Species interactions remain highly disordered, yet with a “diffuse” statistical structure: interaction strengths are biased so that successful competitors subtly favor each other, and correlated so that competitors partition their impacts on other species. We provide strong empirical evidence for this pattern, in data from grassland biodiversity experiments that match our predictions quantitatively. This is a first-of-a-kind test of disorder on empirically measured interactions, and unique evidence that species interactions and coexistence emerge from an underlying high-dimensional space of ecological traits. Our findings provide a new null model for inferring interaction networks with minimal prior information and a set of empirical fingerprints that support a statistical physics-inspired approach of complex ecosystems.

https://bit.ly/32kXWN4

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Pájaros

Eugenio Montejo

Oigo los pájaros afuera,

otros, no los de ayer que ya perdimos,

los nuevos silbos inocentes.

Y no sé si son pájaros,

si alguien que ya no soy los sigue oyendo

a media vida bajo el sol de la tierra.

Quizás es el deseo de retener su voz salvaje

en la mitad de la estación

antes que de los árboles se alejen.

 

Alguien que he sido o soy, no sé,

oye o recuerda,

si hay algo real dentro de mí son ellos,

más que yo mismo, más que el sol afuera,

si es musical la fuerza que hace girar el mundo,

no ha habido nunca sino pájaros,

el canto de los pájaros

que nos trae y nos lleva.

.

 

 

@OurWorldInData

 

Ecological network complexity scales with area

Galiana et al., 2022.

Larger geographical areas contain more species—an observation raised to a law in ecology. Less explored is whether biodiversity changes are accompanied by a modification of interaction networks. We use data from 32 spatial interaction networks from different ecosystems to analyse how network structure changes with area. We find that basic community structure descriptors (number of species, links and links per species) increase with area following a power law. Yet, the distribution of links per species varies little with area, indicating that the fundamental organization of interactions within networks is conserved. Our null model analyses suggest that the spatial scaling of network structure is determined by factors beyond species richness and the number of links. We demonstrate that biodiversity–area relationships can be extended from species counts to higher levels of network complexity. Therefore, the consequences of anthropogenic habitat destruction may extend from species loss to wider simplification of natural communities.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01644-4

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Why is biodiversity important 

Sir David Attenborough 

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"The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendents are least likely to forgive us." 

E.O. Wilson

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