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CATEGORIES:Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: New observations are opening the possibility of characterising habitable environments in exoplanetary systems. We apply the Lotka–Volterra (predator-prey) equations to exoplanet ecology for the first time, modelling between 1–5 anoxic bacterial species within a vertical water column applied to hycean worlds. We demonstrate that dominating phototrophic bacteria at the top of a water column out-compete deeper dwelling phototrophic bacteria, analogous to bacterial blooms on Earth. Incorporating microbial viruses (bacteriophages) within our models can cause ecosystem collapse depending on the time of their introduction, and such phage inclusion can be beneficial to ecological diversity. Finally, our work shows that bacterial populations inhabiting tidally locked exoplanets may be more stable due to constant illumination of the ocean but can have lower peak population densities in such cases when compared to seasonal scenarios. Our work provides an initial step towards understanding the possible ecological diversity on habitable worlds beyond Earth.   arXiv paper link:  https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22491748847
DTSTAMP:20260425T093128
DTSTART:20260506T100000
DTEND:20260506T110000
LOCATION:Fourth floor interaction area, Physics Building, Streatham Campus
SUMMARY;LANGUAGE=en-us:Astro-Seminar: Greg Cooke - Ecological modelling of hycean worlds
UID:054c72d5bcd039576120b3777a67632a@www.exeter.ac.uk
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