Anatomy of extreme events in a complex adaptive system

Large changes tend to dictate the long-term dynamical behaviour of many real-world complex systems in both the natural and social sciences. We provide an analytic, microscopic analysis of extreme events arising in an adaptive population comprising competing agents (e.g. species, cells, traders, data-packets). Our results reveal a taxonomy of such extreme events, and provide a microscopic understanding as to their build-up and likely duration.