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. © Copyright EPLA, 2012.
CITATION STYLE
Grilli, J., Azaele, S., Banavar, J. R., & Maritan, A. (2012). Absence of detailed balance in ecology. EPL, 100(3). https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/100/38002
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