Simon Levin
Princeton
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Articles by Simon Levin
Dispersal diversity buffers species vulnerability to local extinction
Abstract Predicting species persistence within ecological communities is a fundamental challenge for both empirical and theoretical ecology. Existing methods span from mechanistic models, whose parameters are difficult to estimate from data, to statistical tools whose context-specific parameters are less interpretable.
Immune Systems and Ecosystems
Copyright © 2001 by The Resilience Alliance The following is the established format for referencing this article: Levin, S. A. 2001. Immune systems and ecosystems. Conservation Ecology 5(1): 17. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss1/art17/ Commentary Immune Systems and Ecosystems Simon A. Levin Princeton University Introduction Should the Development of Immune Systems for Ecosystems be a Goal?
Management and the Problem of Scale
Copyright ©1997 by The Resilience Alliance* Levin, S.A. 1997. Management and the problem of scale. Conservation Ecology [online]1(1): 13. Available from the Internet. URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol1/iss1/art13/ Commentary, part of Special Feature on Science, Policy, and Advocacy Forum Management and the Problem of Scale Simon A.
Towards a Science of Ecological Management
Copyright ©1999 by The Resilience Alliance* The following is the established format for referencing this article: Levin, S. A. 1999. Towards a science of ecological management. Conservation Ecology 3(2): 6. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol3/iss2/art6/ Commentary, part of Special Feature on Recent Advances in Ecological Theory and Practice Towards a Science of Ecological Management Simon A.
Imbalance in gut microbial interactions as a marker of health and disease
Abstract Imbalances in the human gut microbiome (dysbioses) are linked to multiple diseases but remain poorly understood. Current biomarkers to identify dysbiosis are inconsistent and fail to capture the ecological mechanisms differentiating healthy from diseased microbiomes. We propose a general dysbiosis biomarker, inspired by phenomenology observed in a gut-microbiome theoretical model introduced here.
Global Stability and Tipping Point Prediction in a Coral-Algae Model Using Landscape-Flux Theory
Abstract Coral reef ecosystems are remarkable for their biodiversity and ecological significance, exhibiting the capacity to exist in different stable configurations with possible abrupt shifts between these alternative stable states. This study applies landscape-flux theory to analyze how these complex systems behave when subjected to random environmental disturbances.
Revealing Physical Mechanisms of Spatial Pattern Formation and Switching in Ecosystems via Nonequilibrium Landscape and Flux
1 Introduction Spatial patterns are widely observed in numerous nonequilibrium systems across a range of scientific fields, prominent examples include Turing patterns in chemical reactions,[1-3] pattern formation during embryonic development,[4-7] patterns in vegetation or animal distributions in ecological models,[8-20] and complex spatial patterns emerging in turbulence.[21, 22] These various spatial patterns have attracted considerable interest for their complex emergence and...
What the Fragility of Democracy Means for Corporations - a Meeting of Minds
In 2024, eight of the ten most populous countries in the world held general elections.
[2502.09880] Interpretable Early Warnings using Machine Learning in an Online Game-experiment
[Submitted on 14 Feb 2025] Title:Interpretable Early Warnings using Machine Learning in an Online Game-experiment View a PDF of the paper titled Interpretable Early Warnings using Machine Learning in an Online Game-experiment, by Guillaume Falmagne and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Stemming from physics and later applied to other fields such as ecology, the theory of critical transitions suggests that some regime shifts are preceded by statistical early warning signals.
Ecohydrological Engineering for the Sustainable Management of Water-Biota Interactions
1 Introduction In the face of accelerating global environmental change, combining hydrology, ecology and engineering has become increasingly vital. This integration is essential for developing sustainable solutions for pressing issues such as water scarcity, climate change and ecosystem degradation (Arnell et al. 2016; Rockström et al. 2009). Hydrology and environmental engineering are evolving rapidly to address these challenges (Friedlingstein et al. 2020; Rockström et al.
A unifying theoretical framework for tick-borne disease risk to explain conflicting results of exclosure experiments across scales
Abstract Disease ecology has focused greatly in recent decades on determining how changes to biodiversity may drive infectious disease risk for humans. Fencing off experimental areas (exclosures) has been a common experimental approach to assess how removing large-body size hosts may affect disease risk, especially with tick-borne pathogens (TBPs) such as those causing Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis.
The development of ecological systems along paths of least resistance
Abstract A long-standing question in biology is whether there are common principles that characterize the development of ecological systems (the appearance of a group of taxa), regardless of organismal diversity and environmental context. Classic ecological theory holds that these systems develop following a sequenced orderly process that generally proceeds from fast-growing to slow-growing taxa and depends on life-history trade-offs.
Do the analysts still call the shots?
How much does analyst research – from Gartner, Forrester and all the rest of them – really impact your sales pipeline? In these days of online peer reviews and social media, do the analysts still influence where the money goes? There have been plenty of studies into the question of analyst influence, over the years, usually looking at the question from the buyer’s side.
Variation in season length and development time is sufficient to drive the emergence and coexistence of social and solitary behavioral strategies
Abstract Season length and its associated variables can influence the expression of social behaviors, including the occurrence of eusociality in insects. Eusociality can vary widely across environmental gradients, both within and between different species. Numerous theoretical models have been developed to examine the life history traits that underlie the emergence and maintenance of eusociality, yet the impact of seasonality on this process is largely uncharacterized.
When can higher‐order interactions produce stable coexistence?
INTRODUCTION Understanding how species stably coexist in diverse communities is one of the central challenges in ecology (Chesson, 2000; Gause, 1932; Hutchinson, 1961). Most attempts to solve this problem have assumed that species interact in a pairwise fashion (Lotka, 1910; Ricklefs & Miller, 2000; Volterra, 1928), and thus experiments on every pair of species in a community should reveal the complete interaction network (Levine et al., 2017).
Exploring New Frontiers In Technology Regulation
We are experiencing a new Promethean moment: Just as Prometheus giving fire to humanity transformed civilization, recent technological advancements, like AI, genomics, or quantum computing, promise to transform how business and society work. Technological advancements bring great benefits to society—often exceeding the anticipations of the developers.
Noise: An Unlikely Ally for Business Leaders
Falls, which often result from sensory loss that affects balance, are a major cause of injury and death for people over age 65. Researchers have found that vibrating shoe insoles can greatly lower the risk of falls by exposing feet to random sensory noise. This seems paradoxical, since one might expect random noise to impair sensory connection with the ground.
Prosocial preferences improve climate risk management in subsistence farming communities - Nature Sustainability
Abstract Several governments have tested formal index-based insurance to build climate resilience among smallholder farmers. Yet, adoption of such programmes has generated concerns that insurance may crowd out long-established informal risk transfer arrangements. Understanding this phenomenon requires new analytic approaches that capture dynamics of human social behaviour when facing risky events.
Toward A Flourishing Aging Society
Around the globe, average lifespans are increasing—a clear advancement for humanity—and fertility rates are falling, which is also a positive development, to the extent that it reflects greater freedom of choice on childbearing. However, taken together, these trends are creating an aging global population that is expected to result in significant economic and societal challenges, driven by a declining labor force, increased health expenditures, and higher pressure on social safety nets.
Coupled models of genomic surveillance and evolving pandemics with applications for timely public health interventions | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Coupled models of genomic surveillance and evolving pandemics with applications for timely public health interventions Baltazar Espinoza baltazar.espinoza@virginia.edu, Aniruddha Adiga, Srinivasan Venkatramanan, +14 , Andrew Scott Warren, Jiangzhuo Chen, Bryan Leroy Lewis https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0793-6082, Anil Vullikanti, Samarth Swarup, Sifat Moon, Christopher Louis Barrett https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2518-0039, Siva Athreya, Rajesh Sundaresan, Vijay Chandru, Ramanan Laxminarayan...
Polarization and the Psychology of Collectives
Abstract Achieving global sustainability in the face of climate change, pandemics, and other global systemic threats will require collective intelligence and collective action beyond what we are currently experiencing. Increasing polarization within nations and populist trends that undercut international cooperation make the problem even harder.
Can higher-order interactions resolve the species coexistence paradox?
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Economic factors underlying biodiversity loss
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On the limits to invasion prediction using coexistence outcomes
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Response diversity as a sustainability strategy - Nature Sustainability
Abstract Financial advisers recommend a diverse portfolio to respond to market fluctuations across sectors. Similarly, nature has evolved a diverse portfolio of species to maintain ecosystem function amid environmental fluctuations. In urban planning, public health, transport and communications, food production, and other domains, however, this feature often seems ignored.
Understanding and Harnessing the Value of Diversity
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Social dilemmas of sociality due to beneficial and costly contagion
Competition between two sociality strategies. Since we assume contagion dynamics occur on a much faster timescale than evolutionary competition, we can explore the evolutionary consequences of fitness/utility that depend on equilibrium fractions susceptible to the bad contagion and infected with the good contagion .
Building a Mutually Reinforcing System of Organizational and Personal Resilience
Many social systems are characterized by the same dynamic, with one key difference. When adversity occurs, humans are better able to draw deeper lessons from their experiences. Humans are able to reflect, analyze, adapt, hypothesize, and imagine different scenarios. This means that humans have an even richer capacity to grow and benefit from adversity—becoming more adaptive, imaginative, and resourceful through experimenting, reflecting, and taking action in response to disruption.
What Did We Learn from the COVID Crisis?
Key takeaways from the 2021 Meeting of Minds By Martin Reeves, Simon Levin, Annelies O’Dea The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact was pervasive, persistent, and personal, with broad-ranging effects on both collective- and individual-lived experience. It was first and foremost a challenge to our public health systems, but quickly became a test of our economic and social systems as well.
The dynamics of political polarization
A number of trends in national and international politics greatly affect our capacity to achieve the cooperation that will be necessary to address the challenges facing society over the coming decades. These involve the interplay among partisanship and party loyalties within countries, populism, and polarization within and among nations. The trends are widespread and seem to be reshaping politics across the globe.
Risk transfer policies and climate-induced immobility among smallholder farmers - Nature Climate Change
References 1. Howden, S. M. et al. Adapting agriculture to climate change. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 19691–19696 (2007). 2. Huang, J., Yu, H., Guan, X., Wang, G. & Guo, R. Accelerated dryland expansion under climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 166–171 (2015). 3. McLeman, R. & Smit, B. Migration as an adaptation to climate change. Clim. Change 76, 31–53 (2006). 4. Bohra-Mishra, P., Oppenheimer, M. & Hsiang, S. Nonlinear permanent migration response to climatic variations but minimal response to disasters. Proc.
Modeling Natural Selection at Multiple Levels of Organization
By Daniel B. Cooney, Simon A. Levin, Yoichiro Mori, and Joshua B. Plotkin Natural selection in complex biological and social systems can simultaneously operate across multiple levels of organization, ranging from genes and cells to animal groups and complex human societies. A common aspect of these scenarios is an evolutionary tug-of-war in which a trait or behavior that benefits a single individual may detrimentally affect the group to which the individual belongs (and vice versa).
A well-timed shift from local to global agreements accelerates climate change mitigation
Abstract Recent attempts at cooperating on climate change mitigation highlight the limited efficacy of large-scale negotiations, when commitment to mitigation is costly and initially rare. Deepening existing voluntary mitigation pledges could require more stringent, legally-binding agreements that currently remain untenable at the global scale.
Analysis of the potential impact of durability, timing, and transmission blocking of COVID-19 vaccine on morbidity and mortality
Abstract Background COVID-19 vaccines have been approved and made available. While questions of vaccine allocation strategies have received significant attention, important questions remain regarding the potential impact of the vaccine given uncertainties regarding efficacy against transmission, availability, timing, and durability.
Optimal, near-optimal, and robust epidemic control
Abstract In the absence of drugs and vaccines, policymakers use non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing to decrease rates of disease-causing contact, with the aim of reducing or delaying the epidemic peak. These measures carry social and economic costs, so societies may be unable to maintain them for more than a short period of time.
Twelve Potential Biden Tax Changes Advisors Should Keep an Eye On
Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images There may be only a brief window to take advantage of expiring traditional planning tools. Simon Levin and Donald A. Kress | Mar 18, 2021 President Joe Biden used the budget reconciliation process to push through his recent COVID-19 relief package, a powerful avenue that's only available once a year.
Sunsetting as an Adaptative Strategy
The enactment of financial legislation in the wake of a financial crisis exhibits a number of shortcomings. First, information is scarce regarding causes of the crisis, let alone what would be an appropriate response. Despite that difficulty, legislators feel compelled to legislate given media and public demands for governmental action. This suggests that it will be at best fortuitous if the legislative fixes are adequate to the task of mitigating future crises.
Vol. 4 No. 1 (2021): Ecology, Economy and Society--the INSEE Journal
Published: 2021-01-28 Editorial Commentary Thematic Essay Special Secion: The Commons: A Revisit Celebrating Jodha And Revisiting the Commons Notes from the Field Book Review Reports
How to Build Trust in Covid-19 Vaccines
Safe, effective, and available vaccines are the best long-term solution to the coronavirus pandemic.1 So it’s welcome news that two vaccines are poised for distribution and others will soon be on their way. Preliminary clinical trial data from these two vaccines, made by Pfizer and Moderna, indicate the vaccines are effective at stimulating a strong and long-lasting response against the virus responsible for COVID-19.
Robert May, 1936-2020: A man for all disciplines
Robert (Bob) May, Baron May of Oxford, a long-time International Member of the National Academy of Sciences, passed away on April 28, 2020, in Oxford, United Kingdom, from “frailties of old age, Alzheimer's disease, and pneumonia,” at the age of 84. He is survived by his wife Judith, his daughter Nome, and legions of students and colleagues. Across six decades, Bob had a transformative impact on myriad fields: mathematical biology, ecology, epidemiology, public policy, and finance.
The Biology of Corporate Survival
Related Expertise: Business Strategy, Corporate Finance and Strategy Companies operate in an increasingly complex world: Business environments are more diverse, dynamic, and interconnected than ever—and far less predictable. Yet many firms still pursue classic approaches to strategy that were designed for more-stable times, emphasizing analysis and planning focused on maximizing short-term performance rather than long-term robustness. How are they faring?
Think Biologically: Messy Management for a Complex World
July 18, 2017 By Martin Reeves and Simon Levin When Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev barked “We will bury you!” in 1956, it was not considered an empty threat. It was seen as a real existential threat to capitalism and the American way of life.
These Small Dairy Farms Are a Model for a Resilient Food System
Due to the coronavirus, dairy producers are dumping thousands of gallons of milk every day. But these New Jersey dairy farmers have a better system. Why you can trust us By Andrew Carlson & Daniel Rubenstein & Simon Levin Jun 12, 2020 Cow’s milk is a major part of many Americans’ diets because it contains key vitamins and calcium. But milk consumption has suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other foods, including beef, eggs, fruit, and vegetables.
Are New Jersey's small, networked dairy farms a model for a more resilient food system?
Cow’s milk is a major part of many Americans’ diets because it contains key vitamins and calcium. But milk consumption has suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other foods, including beef, eggs, fruit and vegetables. Economic shutdowns have severely disrupted supply chains that move food from farm to fork. Milk provides a compelling case study.
New Jersey's small, networked dairy farms are a model for a more resilient food system
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Andrew Carlson, Princeton University; Daniel Rubenstein, Princeton University, and Simon Levin, Princeton University (THE CONVERSATION) Cow’s milk is a major part of many Americans’ diets because it contains key vitamins and calcium. But milk consumption has suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other foods, including beef, eggs, fruit and vegetables.
Dynamics in a simple evolutionary-epidemiological model for the evolution of an initial asymptomatic infection stage
Two ancient asteroids with distinctive diamond-like shapes are revealing clues not only about their own formation, but that of the solar system as well.
Evolution of cooperation on temporal networks
Abstract Population structure is a key determinant in fostering cooperation among naturally self-interested individuals in microbial populations, social insect groups, and human societies. Traditional research has focused on static structures, and yet most real interactions are finite in duration and changing in time, forming a temporal network. This raises the question of whether cooperation can emerge and persist despite an intrinsically fragmented population structure.
Ecological resilience
Ecological resilience, also called ecological robustness, the ability of an ecosystem to maintain its normal patterns of nutrient cycling and biomass production after being subjected to damage caused by an ecological disturbance. The term resilience is a term that is sometimes used interchangeably with robustness to describe the ability of a system to continue functioning amid and recover from a disturbance.
Taming Complexity
Idea in Brief The Problem Despite many important advantages, including greater resilience and adaptability, organizational complexity gets bad press in business. Why It Happens The costs of complexity frequently overpower the benefits, because cutting it out is harder than adding it. The Solution In growing your organization, make sure that it remains modular in structure and that all components and connections conform to a small number of simple operating principles.
The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology: The Robert H. MacArthur Award Lecture
Article PDF PDF Share Abstract It is argued that the problem of pattern and scale is the central problem in ecology, unifying population biology and ecosystems science, and marrying basic and applied ecology. Applied challenges, such as the prediction of the ecological causes and consequences of global climate change, require the interfacing of phenomena that occur on very different scales of space, time, and ecological organization.
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