The Tangled Nature model of evolutionary ecology: An overview

Abstract

We present a review of the Tangled Nature model. The model is developed to focus on the effect of evolution and multiple interactions on ecological and evolutionary observables. The model is individual based and ecological structures, such as species, are emergent quantities. The dynamics consists of a simplistic mutation-prone multiplication in which the probability of producing an offspring is determined by the occupancy in genotype space. The macroscopic long time dynamics is intermittent and exhibits a slow decrease in the macroscopic extinction rate. Ecological quantities such as the species abundance distribution and the species-area relationship compare qualitatively well with observations, as does the relation between interaction and diversity. The effect of correlations between parents and mutants has been studied, as has the effect of a conserved resource.