Thilo Gross

No, considering higher-order interactions is great. However, this does not mean that you necessarily have to think of the system as a hypergraph. Ordinary networks provide a suitable framework that can accommodate most HOIs just fine. Bipartite and multilayer frameworks cover much of the rest.

What causes tipping points in complex microbial ecosystems? Check this @pnas.org paper by @thilogross.bsky.social showing that cross-feeding networks create strong interdependencies & small structural changes can trigger abrupt collapses. @akhilesh-nandan.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Very happy to be part of this project. My take on it is, hypergraph or network can describe the same systems and yield the same phenomena. The decision really comes down to if you want to work with matrices or higher-order tensors to explore these phenomena.

Very excited to share this new exploration of motifs and their impacts on the dynamics of the entire network in PNAS! I learned a lot working with this crew (as usual)... with @mhab.bsky.social @akfbio.bsky.social and @thilogross.bsky.social !

Functional motifs in food webs and networks | PNAS When studying a complex system, it is often useful to think of the system as a network of interacting units. One can then ask if some properties of...

New paper with @mhab.bsky.social @jdyeakel.bsky.social and @thilogross.bsky.social out now in @pnas.org! We show when and why you can know something about an entire network, just by knowing the behavior of it's building blocks: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Sarah holds up a biology is bigger than binaries shirt, which has those words in bold white text on a black t shirt with a white lily, honeybee, and clownfish

Tomorrow IRL markets in Philly start, which means a bunch of squid facts shop items will sell out!

We have a few Biology is Bigger than Binaries shirts (designed by @franzanth.bsky.social) left. They're comfy & colors printed great!

Once they're gone that's it.

Get 'em now:
SquidFacts.net

Simply amazing how this is happening and US media is focusing only on absolute nonsense. Now that Ellison and Weiss will control most of media, hard denial of climate crisis will be locked in.

I know why they're doing it, but it's gross to see the logic of power being used to protect the powerful.

The opposite of the ideals of a democratic society, all for a revenue stream already larger than most institutions in the history of human capitalism.

Grim.

Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.

In just about a week, the season's first NetSci Colloquium will happen. And we're starting with a bang . . . with none other than Iain Couzin talking about Collective Behavior in Animal Groups. September 24, 10 AM ET. Register here to get a Zoom link: iu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Diffusion-driven pattern formation in an opinion dynamical network model The spatial organization of individuals and their interactions in communities are important factors known to preserve diversity in many complex systems. Inspired by metapopulation models from ecology,...

Paper alert! See the new pre-print up on arXiv by Tim Mauch (@timmauch.bsky.social) and Thilo Gross (@thilogross.bsky.social) on opinion formation:
arxiv.org/abs/2508.15377

The paper discusses the very nice results of Tim's master thesis, so let's get into the details, shall we?

1/5

→ Are you interested in multiscale phenomena such as the complex dynamics that arise in biology, chemistry, neuroscience, and physics when multiple spatial or temporal scales interact? 🧪

Then join us this summer in Groningen for the summer school:

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The call for our 2026 Postdoc Cohort is now open. We offer 4 full-time positions. Apply until August 24th. hifmb.de/jobs
Please spread the word.
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They have to destroy scientific research to eliminate the point at which civilians from every warzone connect and recognize themselves. How can you build a quantum computing lab without Iranians? Or an ML theory lab without Israelis? Better to let progress die than to allow that they might meet.

The rot is spreading ...

This focus on using research funding to support business is harmful.

How individual systems and their connections react to each other to ensure stability of the whole. We live in a complex world with a plethora of connections and interactions. Many important processes, such as power grid dynamics, ecological interactions, opinion formation, or brain plasticity, can ...

Our new article in Chaos. One of my favorite articles so far. Connecting different disciplines and building on recent breakthroughs in ancient fields (Linear Algebra!).

link.growkudos.com/1ebwrn9qkn4

doi.org/10.1063/5.02...

insane moment in world history right here

The dynamics of microbial cooperation... Cheap metabolites make for shaky friendships; but pricier ones can keep the peace... 🦠

Thanks @janamassing.bsky.social for leading the charge! And great working again w/ @akfbio.bsky.social & @thilogross.bsky.social

I would just leave the country in which there is a financial crisis in higher education. In fact, I have.

Norrköping campus at sunset

We are hiring postdocs in Computational Social Science
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⏰Deadline June 3
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Please apply // help us spread the word

New paper led by @janamassing.bsky.social, with @jdyeakel.bsky.social and @thilogross.bsky.social, on dynamics of cooperative bacteria: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

To explore this further we need models that can exhibit both tipping and gradual transitions in biodiversity. The cross-feeding model proposed here is a very simple model that fills this need.

Of course there is still much room for improvement, but this is how far we got.

Thresholds for ecological responses to global change do not emerge from empirical data - Nature Ecology & Evolution The utility of the threshold paradigm, such that relatively small perturbations drive abrupt ecosystem changes, is challenged by a synthesis of 36 meta-analyses, which detected few signatures of thres...

There is another reason why this is interesting. Presently there is a debate whether or when biodiversity in diverse systems can actually tip. See for example this paper by @hillebr1.bsky.social et al.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In the lab we then supply the community with growth media which supply some of the metabolites. This effectively removes these metabolites as limiting requirements. So this can be also modelled as an attack: C(x)->C(B(x)), where B describes the medium.
...

Illustration of the microbial sampling procedure. As a result of sampling a tipping point is crossed.

Why is this interesting: First, it shows why diversity tends to collapse in small samples. By missing some of the producers of metabolites we can cross the tipping point. In the equations we can model this effect of sampling as an attack on the network: We replace M(x)->M(A(x)).

Of course this is the classic two-folds scenario of tipping, so when we vary a second parameter (e.g. mean number of producers per metabolite), we find a nice Cusp bifurcation. This shows that the transition from high diversity to low diversity can occur by tipping/gradually depending on params...

Figure showing that changing the mean number of consumer requirements leads to tipping. The transitions occur in the characteristic pattern of two fold bifurcations with a region of hysteresis in the middle.

For reasonable choices of parameters this system exhibits tipping points between a low and high diversity state ...

Equation: c* = C(m*), m*=1-M(1-c*)

So this becomes a percolation problem. The whole setup is captured by two nice eqs. Here c* is num of bacteria chance m^* is num of metabolites, and C, M, are the GFs for number of requirements, number of producers per metabolite ...

So this becomes a directed bipartitie network, but if you want you can also think of it as a multilayer net or hypergraph.

What fascinates me is the algebraic structure: Bacteria in the system need ALL their requirements to be met, whereas metabolites need ONE of their producers to be present...