Understanding the possible and the actual in ecological systems

"For science, there are many possible worlds; but the interesting one is the world that exists and has already shown itself to be at work for a long time. Science attempts to confront the possible wit the actual" Françoise Jacob.

Ecological systems are formed by the collection of interacting populations (known as ecological community) in a given place  and time, exhibiting complex emergent behavior (not reducible to the individual populations but created by local interactions). Each community forms feedback processes with the physical and chemical environment and regulates different ecosystem services and functions, such as soil formation, nutrient recycling, water purification, carbon sequestration, among others. Therefore, explaining and predicting the possible and the actual in ecological systems is a fundamental scientific problem, and underpins our ability to develop successful interventions in bio-restoration, bio-technologies, and bio-medicine. 

Our research is centered on understanding the feasibility of observing the emergence, transformation, and regeneration of ecological systems under environmental changes.

We use formal procedures of systems thinking, synthesis, and mathematical modeling. Formally, our work has been rooted on the notion of structural stability (the capacity of a system to display a particular behavior despite small perturbations to its dynamics) and uses tools as varied as: geometry, probability, population dynamics, statistical mechanics, information theory, metabolic scaling theory, homology, matrix theory, network theory, causal inference, and empirical dynamic modeling. 

Feasibility principle

(i) Every possible biological solution (e.g., ecological community) is feasible for a given set of environmental challenges.

(ii) Self-organization leads to solutions that are feasible for the largest set of local environmental challenges. 

Test it yourself: feasibilityR