2002/04/08 by Serge Galam, Bastien Chopard, Michel Droz · 25 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Biological dispersal #Biology #Cellular automaton #Competition (biology) #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Demography #Diffusion #Ecology #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Evolutionary biology #Lattice (music) #Mathematics #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Sociology #Statistical physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-bio
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0378-4371(02)01178-0
published in Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 314(1-4), 256-263 (Elsevier BV) · 11 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2002/04/08 · openalex publication_date 2002/11/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We discuss a cellular automata model to study the competition between an emergent better fitted species against an existing majority species. The model implement local fights among small group of individual and a synchronous random walk on a 2D lattice. The faith of the system, i.e. the spreading or disappearance of the species is determined by their initial density and fight frequency. The initial density of the emergent species has to be higher than a critical threshold for total spreading but this value depends in a non-trivial way of the fight frequency. Below the threshold any better adapted species disappears showing that a qualitative advantage is not enough for a minority to win. No strategy is involved but spatial organization turns out to be crucial. For instance at minority densities of zero measure some very rare local geometries which occur by chance are found to be killer geometries. Once set they lead with high probability to the total destruction of the preexisting majority species. The occurrence rate of these killer geometries is function of the system size. This model may apply to a large spectrum of competing groups like smoker-non smoker, opinion forming, diffusion of innovation setting of industrial standards, species evolution, epidemic spreading and cancer growth.