A $p$-adic Reaction--Diffusion Model of Branching Coral Growth and Calcification Dynamics

Abstract

Coral colonies exhibit complex, self-similar branching architectures shaped by biochemical interactions and environmental constraints. To model their growth and calcification dynamics, we propose a novel p-adic reaction-diffusion framework defined over p-adic ultrametric spaces. The model incorporates biologically grounded reactions involving calcium and bicarbonate ions, whose interplay drives the precipitation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Nonlocal diffusion is governed by the Vladimirov operator over the p-adic integers, naturally capturing the hierarchical geometry of branching coral structures. Discretization over p-adic balls yields a high-dimensional nonlinear ODE system, which we solve numerically to examine how environmental and kinetic parameters, particularly CO2 concentration, influence morphogenetic outcomes. The resulting simulations reproduce structurally diverse and biologically plausible branching patterns. This approach bridges non-Archimedean analysis with morphogenesis modeling and provides a mathematically rigorous framework for investigating hierarchical structure formation in developmental biology.