Self-organized criticality in a model of biological evolution with long range interactions

Abstract

In this work we study the effects of introducing long range interactions in the Bak-Sneppen (BS) model of biological evolution. We analyze a recebtly propopsed version of the BS model where the interactions decay as r^{-alpha}; in this way the first nearest neighbors model is recovered in the limit alpha -> infinity, and the random neighbors version for alpha=0. We study the space and time correlations and analize how the critical behavior of the system changes with the parameter alpha. We also study the sensibility to initial conditions of the model using the spreading of damage technique. We found that the system displays several distinct critical regimes as alpha is varied from alpha=0 to alpha -> infinity.