🚨 🚨 How do group dynamics shape contagion onsets and multistable active phases under collective reinforcement?
👉 arxiv.org/abs/2603.28566
@santiagolaot.bsky.social @federicomalizia.bsky.social @leahkeating.bsky.social @gstonge.bsky.social V. Latora @gomezgardenes.bsky.social & @lhd.bsky.social
🚨 New preprint showing that viral evolution 🦠 leads to superexponential growth 📈 and, as a consequence, challenges control policies, potentially worsening outcomes vs no action
👉 arxiv.org/abs/2603.18801
@santiagolaot.bsky.social A. Arenas @gomezgardenes.bsky.social & @sorianopanos.bsky.social
We are excited to see our work featured on the cover of @commsphys.nature.com!
“Genotype networks drive oscillating endemicity and epidemic trajectories in viral evolution” by @gotham-lab.bsky.social.
What a cool thumbnail 😁
⌛ Last hours for the early bird registration!!!
Dont miss it 👇
A grid of images showing SocioPatterns wearable devices, collaborators of the project, proximity graphs, and deployments in museums, hospitals, villages.
Long overdue refresh of the SocioPatterns website! ✨ sociopatterns.org New content & datasets, and a chance to celebrate 17+ years of collabs, ~100 publications, 2000+ studies using our data. Thanks – more ahead! @alainbarrat.bsky.social @wouter-vdb.bsky.social @foolsdelight.bsky.social @isi.it
6/6 Thanks to all the collaborators in this project:
Hugo Pérez, @santiagolaot.bsky.social @federicomalizia.bsky.social, Luis Mario Floria, @gomezgardenes.bsky.social & @sorianopanos.bsky.social
More info at: www.nature.com/articles/s42...
5/6 But the microscopic organization is also important.
Hyperedge overlap promotes polarization, as it reduces exposure to different opinions and reinforces local consensus 🤝
4/6 This effect is structural.
As higher-order interactions become denser, agents increasingly participate in heterogeneous groups, which suppress polarization and promote moderation.
We also show this analytically!
3/6 The key result is that sparse higher-order interactions promote polarization.
When group interactions are sparse, agents are often embedded in homogeneous groups, limiting exposure to dissent and reinforcing extreme views.
2/6 Most opinion-dynamics models rely on pairwise interactions 👭+👬+👫+....
However, opinion formation often happens in groups:
👥👥👥👥👥👥+👥👥👥👥👥👥+👥👥👥👥+... where discussions can reinforce or moderate views.
This demands a higher-order framework to explicitly capture group interactions and homophily.
1/6 And another article out in @commsphys.nature.com
Sparse group interactions polarize…but dense group interactions moderate!!
Polarization emerges as a structural effect of how groups are organized: www.nature.com/articles/s42...
7/7 Thanks to all the collaborators in this project:
@santiagolaot.bsky.social , Octavian Rotita, Alex Arenas, @sorianopanos.bsky.social & @gomezgardenes.bsky.social
More info at:
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
and... stay tuned, more to come 😉 !!!
6/7 Strikingly, the model partially reconstructs empirical epidemic trajectories, recovering the temporal ordering of strain emergence observed in genomic surveillance.
Overall, epidemic dynamics 📈 depend crucially on the topology of genotype networks, beyond low-dimensional antigenic descriptions.
5/7 We then apply the model to Influenza A (H3N2). Its modular genotype network naturally produces:
☑️ lineage turnover
☑️ competition between multiple strains
4/7 The key result is that network topology alone controls the endemic behavior:
▶️ Homogeneous networks → stable equilibria.
▶️ Modular networks with mutant swarms → recurrent oscillations.
No seasonal forcing is required to produce these oscillations!!!
3/7 To study this, we introduce an eco-evolutionary epidemic model coupling:
✔ Contagion
✔ Immune memory & cross-immunity
✔ Mutation as diffusion on genotype networks
All within a minimal, analytically tractable framework.
2/7 Classical eco-evolutionary models describe antigenic drift in low-dimensional antigenic spaces.
However, genomic data tell a different story: real viruses evolve on heterogeneous, modular genotype networks, with mutant swarms capturing different viral lineages.
1/7 🚨 New article out in @commsphys.nature.com
We show that viral 🦠 evolution is best captured through complex genotype networks, whose topology alone can drive oscillatory endemic dynamics and epidemic variability:
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
🚨 Last hours!!! 👇
Our two youngest members, @frandilisante.bsky.social and Hernán Gracia, were awarded yesterday as the best Master’s and Bachelor’s students at the San Alberto Magno festivity in our Faculty of Science at @unizar.es
Congratulations, and keep enjoying the research journey!! 🚀
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 9/12. Thrilled to have Jordi Soriano as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #neurons and #networks!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 10/12. Thrilled to have Lisette Espín-Noboa @lespin.bsky.social as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #socialinequality and #networks!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 12/12. Thrilled to have Virginia Domínguez-García @domgarvir.bsky.social as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #ecology and #networks!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 11/12. Thrilled to have Vito Latora as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #dynamics and #networks!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 4/12. Thrilled to have Anna Levina as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #networks, #neurons and #criticality!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 5/12. Thrilled to have Laurent Hébert-Dufresne @lhd.bsky.social as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #networks and #dynamics!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 6/12. Thrilled to have Sylvia Cremer as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #networks, #socialimmunity and #ants!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 7/12. Thrilled to have Sandro Meloni @smelons.bsky.social as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #dynamics on #networks!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
📢 Keynotes unlocked: 8/12. Thrilled to have Andrea Migliano as a keynote speaker in Complenet’26! Join us to learn more about #anthropology and #networks!
🌐 Info & registration: complenet.weeblysite.com
🚨 Call for contributions open – submit by Nov 15, 2025!
🎉 So excited to host the next CompleNet conference 🎉
Don’t miss it 👇 See you next May in Zaragoza!!!