Urban Ecology and evolution

yvesdecadt at yahoo.com yvesdecadt at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 22 11:03:08 EDT 2000


See my thoughts on evolution and ecology in the site below :

"Information has a qualitative impact on evolution, that is equal to
the impact of energy and matter"
"Nature has a tendency to create habits : I have called these habits
attractors, and information is at the heart of these attractors"
"It from bit and fit from bit"
"Creation (of order) leads to degeneration (chaos, disorder) ; the
reverse is also through, but to a lesser extent"
"If there is a God, he is probably made of self-organized Information"


A summary paper (English) and a virtual book (Dutch) on this new web-
site describe the origin and impact of information in evolution
(http://www.geocities.com/evolutionweb). The definition of information
is very broad, to support the understanding of the full impact that
information has on self-organization, chaos and complexity, entropy and
the building of hierarchy in evolution.
Evolution is a sequence of variation and selection.
Both the virtual book and the paper describe how information affects
self-organisation and self-replication in evolution, by influencing the
probability of selection. As a result, instead of chaos, complexity
arises, changing the balance between chaos and complexity, at the edge
of chaos. The web-site describes in a coherent way that different types
of information (Alfa-, Beta- and Gamma-information), lead to different
types of Attractors in the course of evolution, leading to different
types of Interactors. The presence of Attractors, decreases the local
entropy of the relevant systems. By decreasing the entropy, the balance
between chaos and complexity shifts towards a greater complexity, order
and hierarchy in evolution.
The story is expanding from physical, (bio)-chemical and chemical to
cultural evolution.
Please read the summary paper, and I appreciate your comments.
Yves Decadt
my  mail : yvesdecadt at yahoo.com
-------
In article <39B4C900.407ED35B at earthlink.net>,
  joelrobertlyons at earthlink.net wrote:
>
> --------------699AB9EB1E6F4764386774FD
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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> The September-October 2000 issue of American Scientist
> (Sigma XI, The Scientific Research Society) features an
> article called A New Urban Ecology (modeling human
> communities as integral parts of ecosystems poses special
> problems for the development and testing of ecological
> theory).  Included is a chart that shows examples of
> species whose evolution has been influenced by selection
> pressures created by human activity - often over periods
> as short as 1 to 30 years.  Recent studies have shown
> that fruit flies and egg laying butterflies have rapidly
> adapted to prefer new human introduced host plants.
> The article sites checkerspots as an example.  I'd like
> to see more information regarding this phenomenom.
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> --------------699AB9EB1E6F4764386774FD
> Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
> <html>
> The September-October 2000 issue of American Scientist
> <br>(Sigma XI, The Scientific Research Society) features an
> <br>article called A New Urban Ecology (modeling human
> <br>communities as integral parts of ecosystems poses special
> <br>problems for the development and testing of ecological
> <br>theory).&nbsp; Included is a chart that shows examples of
> <br>species whose evolution has been influenced by selection
> <br>pressures created by human activity - often over periods
> <br>as short as 1 to 30 years.&nbsp; Recent studies have shown
> <br>that fruit flies and egg laying <b>butterflies</b> have rapidly
> <br>adapted to prefer new human introduced host plants.
> <br>The article sites checkerspots as an example.&nbsp; I'd like
> <br>to see more information regarding this phenomenom.
> <br>Thanks in advance for your help.</html>
>
> --------------699AB9EB1E6F4764386774FD--
>
>


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