Microscopic noise, adaptation and survival in hostile environments

The survival of autocatalytic agents in hostile environments depends on their ability to adapt their spatial configuration to local fluctuations. A model of diffusive reactants that extract the advantage of spatio-temporal fluctuations associated with the stochastic wandering of diffusive catalysts is discussed. Two arguments are presented for the basic processes behind this extraordinary behavior. In the first, the local colonies that evolve around any spatially advantageous region overlap in space-time and an infinite directed percolation cluster emerges. The second argument is based on the return probability of a diffusive agent that is shown to yield finite density of active “oases" with an exponentially large contribution to the reactant population. The different range of applicability of these survival lower bounds to small systems is discussed. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2007