糖心TV Complexity Science Events
Complexity Centre and MathSys CDT events carry priority over room D1.07.
To book D1.07 please email Sheetal dot Sharma at warwick dot ac dot uk
Please note that your event booking is for D1.07 only. The adjacent common room is a private area for the MathSys Centre that cannot used as part of your booking.
Complexity Forum: Richard Blythe (Edinburgh)
Speaker: Richard Blythe (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
Title: Neutral evolution in structured populations
Abstract:
Neutral theory describes the dynamics of populations in the absence of selection (i.e., some heritable trait that favours some species over others). Within this theory, all species are considered equivalent, and diversity in species abundances arises through chance alone. The simplest neutral models have a single, well-mixed population. Given that almost all populations are (e.g., spatially-) structured, it is natural to ask how this structure changes the predictions of neutral theory. The idea that that the dynamics of structured populations are well-captured by unstructured models with an appropriate 'effective size' is well-established in population genetics. In this talk, I will outline the separation of timescales that leads to spatial structure being almost irrelevant in neutral theory, and illustrate that subtle differences between structured and unstructured models nevertheless remain.