A Universal Lifetime Distribution for Multi-Species Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal lifetime distribution model for social entities in multi-species systems, revealing a stretched-exponential pattern with a new 'modified Red-Queen' hypothesis, supported by empirical data.

Contribution

The study proposes a universal lifetime distribution model for interacting social entities and introduces the 'modified Red-Queen' hypothesis to explain it.

Findings

Lifetime distribution fits a stretched-exponential with exponent ~1/2

Universal distribution observed across different social systems

Model aligns with empirical lifetime data

Abstract

Lifetime distributions of social entities, such as enterprises, products, and media contents, are one of the fundamental statistics characterizing the social dynamics. To investigate the lifetime distribution of mutually interacting systems, simple models having a rule for additions and deletions of entities are investigated. We found a quite universal lifetime distribution for various kinds of inter-entity interactions, and it is well fitted by a stretched-exponential function with an exponent close to 1/2. We propose a "modified Red-Queen" hypothesis to explain this distribution. We also review empirical studies on the lifetime distribution of social entities, and discussed the applicability of the model.