title: Effect of environment partitioning on the survival and coexistence of autocatalytic replicators.
abstract: The paradigm of cubic autocatalytic replicators with decay in coupled isothermal continuous stirred tank reactors is selected as a model to study complex behavior in population dynamics of sexually reproducing species in a heterogenous environment. It is shown that, even a setup with single species in two coupled environments may have regions in parameter space that result in chaotic behavior, hence segregation in the environment causes complexity in the system dynamics. Furthermore, partitioning is found to lead to emergence phenomena exemplified by steady states not obtainable in the equivalent homogeneous system. These phenomena are illustrated through case studies involving single or multiple species. Results show that the coupled environments can host species, that would not survive should the coupling be removed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. biroli@northwestern.edu
authors.forename: Inanç
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Birol
authors.forename: Satish J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Parulekar
authors.forename: Fouad
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Teymour
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D019149:Bioreactors; D002384:Catalysis; D017753:Ecosystem; D004777:Environment; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics