Search for Directionality Measures in Evolutionary Ecology

The myriad microscopic interactions among the individual organisms that constitute an ecological system collectively give rise, at the macroscopic scale, to precise evolutionary trends. The ability to predict the directionality of such trends is crucial for understanding and managing the dynamics of natural systems. Nevertheless, identifying the key physical quantities that capture such directional behaviour poses a major challenge. While standard thermodynamics is not applicable to living systems because of their non-equilibrium nature, alternative measures of directionality may serve to the purpose. In this thesis, we use the Tangled Nature model as a proxy of evolutionary systems, testing Evolutionary Entropy besides network stability indicators.