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arXiv · 1210.5819

Absence of Detailed Balance in Ecology

Jacopo Grilli·Sandro Azaele·Jayanth R. Banavar·Amos Maritan
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Abstract

Living systems are typically characterized by irreversible processes. A condition equivalent to the reversibility is the detailed balance, whose absence is an obstacle for analytically solving ecological models. We revisit a promising model with an elegant field-theoretic analytic solution and show that the theoretical analysis is invalid because of an implicit assumption of detailed balance. A signature of the difficulties is evident in the inconsistencies appearing in the many-point correlation functions and in the analytical formula for the species area relationship.

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Jacopo Grilli, Sandro Azaele, Jayanth R. Banavar, Amos Maritan. 2012-10-22. Absence of Detailed Balance in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075%2F100%2F38002

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