Biotic complexity of population dynamics

Changes in population size of animal species (lynx, muskrat, beaver, salmon, and fox), show diversification, episodic patterns in recurrence plots, novelty, nonrandom complexity, and asymmetric statistical distribution. These features of creativity characterize bios, a nonstationary pattern generated by bipolar feedback and multi‐agent predator–prey simulations, absent in chaotic attractors. Population series show partial‐autocorrelation, and the time series of the differences between consecutive terms also showed nonrandom patterns, differentiating bios from noise. As biotic patterns are found in quantum, cosmological, meteorological, biological, and economic processes, we propose that bipolar feedback is a generic process that contributes to the evolutionary generation of complexity at multiple levels of organization. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2008.