Such efforts seem so inherently metaphorical it's difficult for me to approach
a concrete conversation. For example, I have a couple of biologist friends, one
meso (bugs) and one macro (ungulates), who thought I was being contrarian when
I challenged their assertion that biodiversity in urban areas was *obviously*
lower than that of natural areas like forests. Of course, I admit my ignorance
up front. Maybe they are. But it's just not obvious to me.
Since then, they've presented (meso and macro) arguments that justify their position. It
does seem obvious that urban areas trend to more adaptable animals like coyotes and
raccoons and less so to, say, deer. The bugs are more interesting. Meso guy found some
articles that show "species" diversity in urban areas is roughly the same as
natural areas. But phylogenetic diversity is clearly lower in urban areas. That seems
counter intuitive to me. It's a cool result.
My main point when I originally expressed skepticism, though, was about
microbial diversity. Is it possible that bug-layer and microbe-layer (including
what lives in/on large animals like rats and humans) diversity makes up for
lower diversity in large-layers?
I *feel* that projects like Chan's could help with this question since it seems
prohibitively expensive to sample and test enough microbial populations of
urban and wild areas, especially if we include intra-animal populations. I'm
just not sure *how* they could help.
On 9/24/22 03:38, David Eric Smith wrote:
It’s funny; I know Bert.
One of our colleagues played a role in bringing him out to work at Google in
Tokyo.
A mathematician (Will Cavendish) who has part-time support at IAS
https://www.ias.edu/scholars/will-cavendish
<https://www.ias.edu/scholars/will-cavendish>
is also interested in the mathematical dimensions of this, though I have only a
glancing exposure to how those two together are trying to frame the problems.
Because Bert has come at it more from the ALife/engineering approach, and
Will’s interests run more in the direction of proving capabilities of broad
classes of systems, often interested in their aggregation as categories (and
also about the role of simulation as a replacement for proof in systems that
produce complicated enough state spaces), it should be a productive and
interesting collaboration. I don’t know how engaged others are in the Google
group on this specific project, because I am too far outside that loop.
Eric
On Sep 23, 2022, at 4:03 PM, Jon Zingale <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.05433.pdf <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.05433.pdf>
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