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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 26: Synthetic life-like systems and Origins of Life
BP 26.3: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 20. März 2025, 10:00–10:15, H46
A game of life with dormancy — •Daniel Henrik Nevermann1, Claudius Gros1, and Jay Lennon2 — 1Institute for Theoretical Physics, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany — 2Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
The factors contributing to the persistence of life are fundamental for understanding complex living systems. Many species contend with harsh environments by entering a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity, a phenomenon known as dormancy. Here, we develop Spore Life, a model to investigate the effects of dormancy on population dynamics. It is based on Conway’s Game of Life, a deterministic cellular automaton where simple rules govern the metabolic state of an individual based on its neighborhood. For individuals that would otherwise die, Spore Life provides a refuge in the form of an inactive state. These dormant individuals (spores) can resuscitate when local conditions improve. The model includes a parameter α∈[0,1] that controls the survival probability of spores, which yields stochastic dynamics between the limits α = 0 (Game of Life) and α = 1 (Spore Life). In addition to identifying the emergence of unique periodic configurations, we find that spore survival increases the average number of active individuals and buffers populations from extinction. Contrary to expectations, the population stabilization does not require large and long-lived seed bank. Instead, the demographic patterns in Spore Life only require a small number of resuscitation events. Spore Life can be interactively explored at https://itp.uni-frankfurt.de/spore-life/.
Keywords: dormancy; game of life; population survival; seed banks