Survival of the Weakest? Lessons from studies of four or more competing species

Note: Note Special Time at 11AM
Speaker: Royce Zia, Virginia Tech

When: October 26, 2012 (Fri), 11:00AM to 01:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: SCI 352
Hosted by: Sidney Redner

This event is part of the Biophysics/Condensed Matter Seminar Series.

Abstract: Population dynamics is a venerable subject, dating back two centuries to Malthus, Verhulst, Lotka, Volterra, and many others. Nonetheless, new and interesting phenomena are continually being discovered. For example, the recent discovery of "Survival of the Weakest" in cyclic competition of 3 species attracted much attention: <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090213115127.htm>. Considering a similar system with four or more species, we find a more intuitively understandable principle which appears to underpin all systems with cyclically competing species. We will present several interesting aspects of the 4-species system -- from non-linear dynamical phenomena in a deterministic mean-field approach to remarkable extinction probabilities in the stochastic evolution of a finite system. Some insights into the deterministic dynamics, gained from generalizing this system to one with any number of species with arbitrary pairwise interactions, will also be discussed.