Has anyone looked at the role of interdependence between species in Darwinian evolution as being similar to autocatalytic processes that are conjectured to be the basis for pre-biotic evolution?
Looking at what Google has to say:
(search for autocatalytic interdependent species evolution)
Wow! Articles on politics, ecology, and cognitive systems.
This is a great technique to remember — Put together somewhat disparate words, ask Google, and find connections that I would never have thought of.
But I still wonder how the nature of a system of interdependent species affects the shape of the fitness landscape, and therefore whether it contains sharp peaks or instead the rounded hills that promote quasispecies evolution.
[update on 21 July]: And I reveal my ignorance by linking quasispecies evolution to the shape of the fitness landscape instead of the number of individuals. Except it isn’t that simple either, as there are references to work deriving linear forms of the partial differential equations that allow for quasispecies to form in finite populations. Clearly, I still don’t know enough about this, so I’ll skip the references in this post.