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arXiv · 1401.5268

Adapting to a Changing Environment: Non-obvious Thresholds in Multi-Scale Systems

Clare Perryman·Sebastian Wieczorek
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Abstract

Many natural and technological systems fail to adapt to changing external conditions and move to a different state if the conditions vary too fast. Such "non-adiabatic" processes are ubiquitous, but little understood. We identify these processes with a new nonlinear phenomenon---an intricate threshold where a forced system fails to adiabatically follow a changing stable state. In systems with multiple time-scales such thresholds are generic, but non-obvious, meaning they cannot be captured by traditional stability theory. Rather, the phenomenon can be analysed using concepts from modern singular perturbation theory: folded singularities and canard trajectories, including composite canards. Thus, non-obvious thresholds should explain the failure to adapt to a changing environment in a wide range of multi-scale systems including: tipping points in the climate system, regime shifts in ecosystems, excitability in nerve cells, adaptation failure in regulatory genes, and adiabatic switching in technology.

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Clare Perryman, Sebastian Wieczorek. 2014-07-09. Adapting to a Changing Environment: Non-obvious Thresholds in Multi-Scale Systems. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2014.0226

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