Category: Ecology

Summary: Finding how much catalytic dominance one module can gain before modular coexistence collapses in an inhibited autocatalytic network.

Autocatalytic systems can sustain multiple interacting modules, but that coexistence may fail if one module becomes too dominant. This experiment asks how much asymmetry in catalytic strength a modular inhibited network can tolerate before weak cross-module inhibition is no longer enough to preserve multi-module growth.

The model constructs dense non-symmetric catalytic operators with modular structure and fixed inhibition, then bisects a module-asymmetry parameter across larger and larger sizes. The threshold is defined by the collapse of coexistence in favor of a more strongly dominant module.

This matters because autocatalytic theory often studies inhibition and modular structure separately. Here the focus is on the tipping point where structured heterogeneity stops supporting diversity and instead drives concentration into one module.

Method: Dense non-symmetric eigensolve with iterative deepening and bisection on module-asymmetry strength under fixed inhibition.

What is measured: Critical asymmetry threshold, coexistence versus dominance of modules, leading growth-mode behavior, and bracket width.