QLS guest seminar - Tuesday 12 April

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

Tuesday, 12 April at 16:30

ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA building

Speaker: Jacopo GRILLI

Title: " Coexistence in large ecosystems: from structure to function"

Abstract:
Biological systems are composed of many interacting components - in 
ecological communities, populations of different species. Though the 
first models for interacting populations date to almost a century ago, 
the role of species interactions in regulating the response to 
perturbations, and in shaping community composition, is yet not well 
understood. Models for ecological communities have so far concentrated 
on small systems. Here I show that, on the other hand, large ecological 
communities display simple and consistent patterns that can be 
understood as the result of elementary stochastic processes. Using 
random matrix techniques, I study how the properties of the interaction 
networks influence the stability of ecological communities and the 
persistence of the populations. I conclude with a list of challenges 
that need to be overcome to have a more complete understanding of 
statical and dynamical properties of large ecosystems.

Web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/7838/

-- 
Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
e-mail:qls at ictp.it