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Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics

The methods of statistical physics are exemplified in the classical perfect gas—each atom is a single dynamical entity. Such methods can be applied in ecology to the distribution of cosmopolitan species over many sites. The analogue of an atom is a class of species distinguished by the number of sit...

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Autor principal: Bowler, Michael G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7517146/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33286382
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e22060610
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author Bowler, Michael G.
author_facet Bowler, Michael G.
author_sort Bowler, Michael G.
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description The methods of statistical physics are exemplified in the classical perfect gas—each atom is a single dynamical entity. Such methods can be applied in ecology to the distribution of cosmopolitan species over many sites. The analogue of an atom is a class of species distinguished by the number of sites at which it occurs, hardly a material entity; yet, the methods of statistical physics nonetheless seem applicable. This paper compares the application of statistical mechanics to the distribution of atoms and to the vastly different problem of distribution of cosmopolitan species. A number of different approaches show that these distributed entities must be in some sense equivalent; the dynamics must be controlled by interaction between species and the global environment rather than between species and many uncorrelated local environments.
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spelling pubmed-75171462020-11-09 Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics Bowler, Michael G. Entropy (Basel) Article The methods of statistical physics are exemplified in the classical perfect gas—each atom is a single dynamical entity. Such methods can be applied in ecology to the distribution of cosmopolitan species over many sites. The analogue of an atom is a class of species distinguished by the number of sites at which it occurs, hardly a material entity; yet, the methods of statistical physics nonetheless seem applicable. This paper compares the application of statistical mechanics to the distribution of atoms and to the vastly different problem of distribution of cosmopolitan species. A number of different approaches show that these distributed entities must be in some sense equivalent; the dynamics must be controlled by interaction between species and the global environment rather than between species and many uncorrelated local environments. MDPI 2020-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7517146/ /pubmed/33286382 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e22060610 Text en © 2020 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bowler, Michael G.
Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics
title Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics
title_full Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics
title_fullStr Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics
title_full_unstemmed Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics
title_short Ensembles of Atoms, Ensembles of Species: Comparative Statistical Mechanics
title_sort ensembles of atoms, ensembles of species: comparative statistical mechanics
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7517146/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33286382
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e22060610
work_keys_str_mv AT bowlermichaelg ensemblesofatomsensemblesofspeciescomparativestatisticalmechanics