Workshop 2 Description:

Workshop 2: Aspects of Self-Organization in Evolution

The purpose of this workshop is to examine the dynamics of adapting systems in terms of their self-organizing property, that is, their ability to spontaneously take on particular ordered, rather than disordered states. This property plays a role at many different levels: the molecular, viral, bacterial, network, and ecological. We propose to organize the workshop according to the levels of description, from molecular to trophic food webs. Topics will include self-organization in the transition from nonliving to living, evolution on neutral networks, evolution of biological complexity, adaptive radiation in bacterial evolution, and stability of trophic networks.