Skip to main content

Alison Etheridge: Modelling evolution in a spatial continuum

Time: Wed 2019-12-18 15.15 - 17.00

Location: AlbaNova, FR4 Oskar Klein

Participating: Alison Etheridge, University of Oxford

Export to calendar

Schedule

15:15-16:15 Colloquium lecture by Alison Etheridge in Room Oskar Klein, AlbaNova

16:15-17:00 SMC social get together with refreshments

Abstract

Since the pioneering work of Fisher, Haldane and Wright at the beginning of the 20th Century, mathematics has played a central role in theoretical population genetics. In turn, population genetics has provided the motivation both for important classes of probabilistic models, such as coalescent processes, and for deterministic models, such as the celebrated Fisher-KPP equation. Whereas coalescent models capture ‘relatedness’ between genes, the Fisher KPP equation captures something of the interaction between natural selection and spatial structure. What has proved to be remarkably difficult is to combine the two, at least in the biologically relevant setting of a two-dimensional spatial continuum. In this talk we describe some of the challenges of modelling evolution in a spatial continuum and then, as time permits, turn to some results concerning the interplay between natural selection and spatial structure.

Belongs to: Stockholm Mathematics Centre
Last changed: Feb 15, 2024