User:Gibbonss

Generally, I am interested in how simple deterministic interactions can give rise sophisticated emergent behaviors. I want to apply the tools and techniques used in dyanmical systems theory and statistical physics to ecology and evolution. In particular, I am currently investigating the relationship between ecosystem disturbance and community diversity, the non-linear dynamics of ecological communities at transition points between alternative stable states, reconstructing ecological pressures based on their imprints on genome evolution, and deconstructing metagenomic patterns along changing environmental gradients.

I am a microbial ecologist, with expertise in molecular ecology, ecological theory, systems biology, multivariate statistics, metagenomics, biogeochemistry, and bioinformatics.

I hope to gain a better understanding the theory and math surrounding complex systems science. I'm looking forward to seeing the common threads that tie together disciplines.

I recently started thinking about using Taylor's Law as a measure of stability in ecological systems, using spatial data sets (rather than longitudinal data). Taylor's Law is a power-law commonly invoked in ecology: log(variance in species abundance) = a * log(mean of species abundance)^b Joel Cohen has suggested that as the exponent (b) approaches zero, the system approaches a critical transition.