Boston University | Department of Physics
Abstract
Why do we care about certain species or populations? Typically, because they are either going extinct or growing out of control. Tumors, pathogens, and pests are the more worrisome examples of the latter. Such growing populations are difficult to forecast and eradicate in part because they are capable of rapid evolution. My group has been studying how spatial growth affects evolutionary dynamics in minimal models inspired by range expansions of plants and animals, but applicable all the way down to microbial colonies growing on agar plates. We found that small and seemingly unimportant details of the growth and dispersal can result in dramatic changes to both genetic diversity and selective forces. For example, cooperative growth can alter the very topology of genealogical trees, and competition for empty space can nevertheless favor a slower colonizer. I will show how these and other surprising results can be obtained by using reaction-diffusion equations to reason about eco-evolutionary dynamics in space.