A useful correspondence between fluid convection and ecosystem operation

TL;DR

This paper establishes a novel analogy between fluid convection systems and ecological ecosystems, enabling cross-disciplinary insights and predictions about convection patterns using ecological principles.

Contribution

It introduces a correspondence between convective fluid dynamics and ecosystem models, allowing transfer of concepts and derivation of convection roll sizes from ecological fitness arguments.

Findings

Lorenz dynamics can be translated into ecosystem dynamics

Physical interpretations show analogies between fluid and ecological systems

Convection roll size can be derived from ecological fitness considerations

Abstract

Both ecological systems and convective fluid systems are examples of open systems which operate far-from-equilibrium. This article demonstrates that there is a correspondence between a resource-consumer chemostat ecosystem and the Rayleigh-Benard (RB) convective fluid system. The Lorenz dynamics of the RB system can be translated into an ecosystem dynamics. Not only is there a correspondence between the dynamical equations, also the physical interpretations show interesting analogies. By using this fluid-ecosystem analogy, we are able to derive the correct value of the size of convection rolls by competitive fitness arguments borrowed from ecology. We finally conjecture that the Lorenz dynamics can be extended to describe more complex convection patterns that resemble ecological predation.