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Abstract: Life on earth relies on sunlight for energy, but this energy can only be exploited through the collective recycling of matter by communities of microbes, plants, and animals. Yet we lack a framework for understanding how ecosystems can organize themselves to collectively capture the sun’s energy by running cycles of matter subject to thermodynamic constraints. In this talk, we will advance a conceptual model to study the collective properties of nutrient-cycling ecosystems, including when they might collapse. Using the model, we will explain how sufficiently diverse communities of species almost always manage to sustain themselves despite each species "greedily" extracting energy. We will end by generalizing these results and explaining how a theory of life grounded in energetics and ecology may provide signatures of life not only on earth, but also potentially elsewhere.

Host: Kabir Husain (kabir.husain@ucl.ac.uk)