Abstract
Chapter 4 provides a preliminary look at the phenomena to which we now turn : the phenomena typical of aggregates of oscillators. Just as the oscillator populations of physics comprise a very special case with very special properties (associated with linearity, energy conservation, etc.), so did the simple clocks of Chapter 4 comprise another very special case with very special properties (associated with the one-dimensionality of their state space). My objective in this chapter is to organize under the same four headings as in Chapter 4 some discussions and examples of what I take to be the characteristic behavior of attractor cycle oscillators in populations and communities. Such oscillators can have any number (> 2) of variables mutually determining their rates of change in nonlinear ways. Linear oscillators, conservative oscillators, and simple clocks are special limiting cases of the attractor cycle oscillators considered in this chapter.
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© 1980 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Winfree, A.T. (1980). Populations of Attractor Cycle Oscillators. In: The Geometry of Biological Time. Biomathematics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-22492-2_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-22492-2_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-52528-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-22492-2
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