dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaDeterminism, Noise, and Spurious Estimations in a Generalised Model of Population Growth
| Authors | Harold P. de Vladar, Ido Pen |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | q-bio/0602018 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0602018 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.physa.2006.06.025 |
| Journal | H.P. de Vladar and I. Pen. Determinism, noise, and spurious estimations in a generalised model of population growth. Physica A (2007) vol. 373 pp. 477-485 |
Abstract
We study a generalised model of population growth in which the state variable is population growth rate instead of population size. Stochastic parametric perturbations, modelling phenotypic variability, lead to a Langevin system with two sources of multiplicative noise. The stationary probability distributions have two characteristic power-law scales. Numerical simulations show that noise suppresses the explosion of the growth rate which occurs in the deterministic counterpart. Instead, in different parameter regimes populations will grow with ``anomalous'' stochastic rates and (i) stabilise at ``random carrying capacities'', or (ii) go extinct in random times. Using logistic fits to reconstruct the simulated data, we find that even highly significant estimations do not recover or reflect information about the deterministic part of the process. Therefore, the logistic interpretation is not biologically meaningful. These results have implications for distinct model-aided calculations in biological situations because these kinds of estimations could lead to spurious conclusions.
{
"annotation_id": "1437d727-bdc1-4701-9a48-c288b59e3e00",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:01:35.480000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:01:35.480000Z",
"file_hash": "caf5060290b23db46387c8395af6a00b5c7bb52b5786938dc60c7136ded2cfaf",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "We study a generalised model of population growth in which the state variable\nis population growth rate instead of population size. Stochastic parametric\nperturbations, modelling phenotypic variability, lead to a Langevin system with\ntwo sources of multiplicative noise. The stationary probability distributions\nhave two characteristic power-law scales. Numerical simulations show that noise\nsuppresses the explosion of the growth rate which occurs in the deterministic\ncounterpart. Instead, in different parameter regimes populations will grow with\n``anomalous\u0027\u0027 stochastic rates and (i) stabilise at ``random carrying\ncapacities\u0027\u0027, or (ii) go extinct in random times. Using logistic fits to\nreconstruct the simulated data, we find that even highly significant\nestimations do not recover or reflect information about the deterministic part\nof the process. Therefore, the logistic interpretation is not biologically\nmeaningful. These results have implications for distinct model-aided\ncalculations in biological situations because these kinds of estimations could\nlead to spurious conclusions.",
"arxiv_id": "q-bio/0602018",
"authors": [
"Harold P. de Vladar",
"Ido Pen"
],
"categories": [
"q-bio.PE",
"q-bio.QM"
],
"doi": "10.1016/j.physa.2006.06.025",
"journal_ref": "H.P. de Vladar and I. Pen. Determinism, noise, and spurious\n estimations in a generalised model of population growth. Physica A (2007)\n vol. 373 pp. 477-485",
"title": "Determinism, Noise, and Spurious Estimations in a Generalised Model of Population Growth",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0602018"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "a78ddb27-b5d5-4514-8aa5-c131fcfc72af",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}