Steady-state thermodynamics for population dynamics in fluctuating environments with side information

TL;DR

This paper applies steady-state thermodynamics principles to population dynamics in fluctuating environments, revealing new inequalities and behaviors related to organism strategies and environmental noise.

Contribution

It introduces an SST-like framework to population dynamics, deriving Clausius relations and analyzing their dependence on environmental noise and organism strategies.

Findings

Clausius inequality varies with environmental noise levels.

Population growth decomposes into housekeeping and excess parts.

Numerical simulations illustrate strategy-dependent behaviors.

Abstract

Steady-state thermodynamics (SST) is a relatively newly emerging subfield of physics, which deals with transitions between steady states. In this paper, we find an SST-like structure in population dynamics of organisms that can sense their fluctuating environments. As heat is divided into two parts in SST, we decompose population growth into two parts: housekeeping growth and excess growth. Then, we derive the Clausius equality and inequality for excess growth. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate how the Clausius inequality behaves depending on the magnitude of noise and strategies that organisms employ. Finally, we discuss the novelty of our findings and compare them with a previous study.