The simulations show different types of outcomes: a situation where life always survives, a ‘bottleneck’ scenario with early abrupt dying or long-term survival, a critical scenario where random extinction times are found and an outcome where life always perishes. This ‘resets’ the system and as long as some life persists it will eventually lead to new effects on the environment and the chance of a stable outcome. But often, unstable situations occur, leading for instance to a snowball Earth. If this leads to a stable situation, it will persist. In this case, other mechanisms should drive the interaction between life and the biosphere.Īt the planetary scale, sequential selection could occur when life affects the environment. However, on Earth many variables like oxygen or carbon dioxide concentrations are well-mixed. This works in particular with heterogenous environment variables.
By coupling flasks in the simulation, he observed how communities that regulate their environment tend to spread at the expense of those that degrade theirs.
He showed ‘one pot’ simulations in which nutrient recycling loops appear in a robust way. Biospheres need to recycle materials to ‘build bodies’, as Lenton put it. There are different gases present on a planet with life, compared to a lifeless planet. Lenton is inspired by Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and wants to know what selection mechanisms could help life to shape the biosphere. So, Earth system scientist Tim Lenton (University of Exeter, UK) simulated ‘virtual biospheres’ to increase our understanding of the interaction between life and planet. Predicting the evolution of biospheres – Tim Lenton (U Exeter, UK)Īll our knowledge about biospheres is based on Earth.
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