Santa Fe Institute

About: Santa Fe Institute is a nonprofit organization based out in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Complex network. The organization has 558 authors who have published 4558 publications receiving 396015 citations. The organization is also known as: SFI.

Power‐law species–area relationships and self‐similar species distributions within finite areas

Abstract: The species-area relationship (SAR) is often expressed as a power-law, which indicates scale invariance. It has been claimed that the scale invariance or self-similarity at the community level is not compatible to the self-similarity at the level of spatial distribution of individual species, because the power law would only emerge if distributions for all species had identical fractal dimensions. Here we show that even if species differ in their fractal dimensions, the resulting SAR is approximately linear on a log-log scale because observed spatial distributions are inevitably spatially restricted – a phenomenon we term the finite area effect. Using distribution atlases, we demonstrate that the apparent power-law of SARs for central European birds is attributable to this finite-area effect affecting species that indeed reveal selfsimilar distributions. We discuss implications of this mechanism producing the SAR.

Teaching and the life history of cultural transmission in Fijian villages.

Abstract: Much existing literature in anthropology suggests that teaching is rare in non-Western societies, and that cultural transmission is mostly vertical (parent-to-offspring). However, applications of evolutionary theory to humans predict both teaching and non-vertical transmission of culturally learned skills, behaviors, and knowledge should be common cross-culturally. Here, we review this body of theory to derive predictions about when teaching and non-vertical transmission should be adaptive, and thus more likely to be observed empirically. Using three interviews conducted with rural Fijian populations, we find that parents are more likely to teach than are other kin types, high-skill and highly valued domains are more likely to be taught, and oblique transmission is associated with high-skill domains, which are learned later in life. Finally, we conclude that the apparent conflict between theory and empirical evidence is due to a mismatch of theoretical hypotheses and empirical claims across disciplines, and we reconcile theory with the existing literature in light of our results.

A graph-based toy model of chemistry.

Abstract: Large scale chemical reaction networks are a ubiquitous phenomenon, from the metabolism of living cells to processes in planetary atmospheres and chemical technology. At least some of these network...