After the success of the Satellite at ECCS 2014 and CCS 2016, we would like to propose a follow-up Satellite always focusing on Robustness, Adaptability and Critical Transitions in Living Systems

Living systems are characterized by the recurrent emergence of patterns: power-laws distributions, long-range correlations and structured self-organization in living matter are the norm, rather than the exception. All these features are also typical of thermo-dynamical systems poised near a critical point. The great lesson from physics is that criticality can emerge as a collective behaviour in a many-body system with simple (e.g. pairwise) interactions and its characteristics depend only on few details like the dimensionality or symmetries.

In a statistical-mechanics approach, it is fundamental to determine the order parameter, which characterizes the different system phases. This is a crucial step to obtain the key ingredients needed to formulate a modeling framework, so as to obtain a better understanding of the system's macroscopic behaviour. However, the understating of biological/social systems needs more than a mere generalization of the standard statistical mechanics approach.

One of the most striking features of living systems is that they are structured as evolving systems were interactions can turn-on or off, as well as strengthening and weakening, reconfiguring the system connectivity. Thus, by rearranging both the structural and functional topology, living interacting systems may demonstrate unique evolvability, scalability and adaptability properties.

It is of crucial importance to make further steps in the understanding of the main properties that simultaneously confer to these systems high level of both adaptability and robustness. If we can “learn” from evolution, then we would be able to both better manage/supervise these systems and also design more optimal and sustainable new systems.

Relevance to the conference main tracks

1. Foundations of Complex Systems* (Complex networks, self-organization, nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics, mathematical modeling, simulation)

2. Biological Complexity* (Biological networks, system biology, evolution, natural science, medicine and physiology)

Submission Guidelines

We invite you to submit a max. one-page abstract including one (not mandatory) descriptive figure and caption no later than July 13th, 2018

Submissions are required to include the following information: 
- Title of the contribution 
- Author(s) and affiliation(s) 
- e-mail address(es) 
- Name of the speaker. 

Please, indicate your preference for one or more of the following categories to present your research: 
Regular Talk 
Ignite Talk 

Submissions will be evaluated and selected by the Program Committee members. They will be graded accordingly to the following criteria:
- Interest of the proposal respect to the topic of the workshop.
- Novelty of the research.
- Priority will be given to junior researcher (Ph.D. students and post-docs).

Once the selection process is complete, the authors of the accepted abstracts will be notified by e-mail. 

List of Topics

•  stochastic population dynamics
• microbial ecosystems and interactions
• ecology of the macrobiome 
• interacting particle systems
• statistical mechanics models in ecology
• robustness and adaptability of ecosystems
• resilience and criticality of ecological systems
• models and prediction of biodiversity
• molecular evolution

Committees

• Samir Suweis
• Filippo Simini
• Sandro Azaele

Detailed Program  

Invited Speakers

Jacopo Grilli, Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico (USA)

TALK TITLE:Higher-order interactions stabilize dynamics in competitive network models

ABSTRACT: The difficulty of reconciling the staggering biodiversity found in tropical rainforests with classical theories of resource partitioning has led ecologists to explore neutral theories of coexistence, in which all species are assumed to have the same physiological parameters, and variations in species abundance arise from stochastic fluctuations. Simple neutral models have led to much progress, for example to the investigation of spatial and temporal ecological patterns and to the formulation of sampling models that allow contrasting theory and data. However, the high sensitivity of neutral models to slight perturbations of the parameters and the prediction of a strong correlation between a species’ abundance and its age are considered problematic. Here we propose a theory of coexistence in which all species have different physiological rates, and interact with each other through a network of competitive interactions. We show that our models produce robust coexistence of many species even when parameters are drawn at random. Importantly, the dynamical stability of our models is due to higher-order interactions — interactions involving more than two species at a time. The existence of higher-order interactions has been debated in ecology for decades, but their role in shaping ecological communities is still understudied. Our results show that higher-order interactions can have dramatic effects on the dynamics of ecological systems. When set in a stochastic framework, we recover many results from neutral theory but improve on the relationship between age and abundance.

Vasilis Dakos, Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier (ISEM), CNRS UMR, France

TALK TITLE: Τhe Inevitability of Surprise under Global Environmental Change                                                    

ABSTRACT: Evidence is increasing that large scale abrupt changes in ecosystems, fisheries, oceanic circulation patterns, or even human physiology are examples of catastrophic transitions between different dynamical states typically referred to as tipping points. Recent theoretical findings suggest that distinct properties tend to rule system dynamics prior to such transitions. When quantified, these properties may be even used as indicators of loss of resilience for these systems. In this talk, I will provide an overview on how we can quantify resilience and detect tipping points in ecological (but not only) systems. I will use mutualistic communities as an example of measuring resilience to stress in ecological networks. Lastly, I will outline some ideas on how we can expand such approaches to better understand tipping point responses in a changing but adaptive world.

Contributed Talks - ABSTRACTS

In the following link, you can download the book of Abstracts of the satellite's talks:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ohf037bmmf3ux35/AAC-jtOBp8KCeDebgtv-CzZxa?dl=0

Venue

The conference will be hosted (within CCS 2018 international Conference) at Vellidio Convention Center, Thessaloniki, Greece

Contact

samir.suweis@pd.infn.it