  Entropy serves as a central observable in equilibrium thermodynamics.
However, many biological and ecological systems operate far from thermal
equilibrium. Here we show that entropy production can characterize the behavior
of such nonequilibrium systems. To this end we calculate the entropy production
for a population model that displays nonequilibrium behavior resulting from
cyclic competition. At a critical point the dynamics exhibits a transition from
large, limit-cycle like oscillations to small, erratic oscillations. We show
that the entropy production peaks very close to the critical point and tends to
zero upon deviating from it. We further provide analytical methods for
computing the entropy production which agree excellently with numerical
simulations.
