Resilience reconsidered: Case histories from disease ecology

dc.creatorWallace, Rodrick
dc.creatorWallace, Deborah
dc.date2003-10-09
dc.date2003-10-30
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T05:57:53Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T05:57:53Z
dc.descriptionWe expand the current understanding of ecological resilience to include the nested hierarchy of cognitive submodules that particularly, if not uniquely, delineates human ecosystems. These modules, ranging from the immune system to the local social network, are embedded in a cultural milieu which, to take the perspective of the evolutionary anthropologist Robert Boyd, ''is as much a part of human biology as the enamel on our teeth''. We begin by extending recent treatments of cognitive process as associated with characteristic information sources to a certain class of ecosystems through a generalization of coarse-graining. In the spirit of the Large Deviations Program, we then import renormalization formalism via the Asymptotic Equipartition Theorem to obtain punctuated response to parameters of increasing habitat degradation. A Legendre transform of an appropriate joint information permits analysis away from critical points, and generates the expected quasi-stability in a highly natural manner. We interweave the discussion with applications to the public health impacts of the massive deurbanization and deindustrialization presently afflicting the United States.
dc.description21 pages, 8 figures
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0310009
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0310009
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/88160
dc.subjectNeurons and Cognition
dc.subjectPopulations and Evolution
dc.titleResilience reconsidered: Case histories from disease ecology
dc.typetext

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