Venue: TBA
Class Timings: TBA
First Meeting: TBA
Course Description: The course will introduce broad topics in theoretical ecology and evolution, but selected sections will include technical results. how populations grow: logistic models and frequency dependent growth how multiple species coexist: biodiversity, predator-prey and Lotka-Volterra models how populations interact: resource competition and cooperation, consumer-resource models how ecosystems remain stable: the May bound and the ecological instability transition - random matrix, network science and geometric approaches to ecology multistability, stochasticity, and catastrophes in ecosystems statistical inference and data-driven approaches to ecology spatiotemporal structure and metacommunity ecology evolutionary processes: selection, mutation, and drift dynamics on fitness landscapes, epistasis and ruggedness
Textbooks:
Mark Kot, Elements of Mathematical Ecology (Cambridge University Press, 2012
Robert May and Angela McLean, Theoretical Ecology: Principles and Applications (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Kevin S. McCann and Gabriel Gellner, Theoretical Ecology: Concepts and Applications (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Martin Nowak, Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life (Harvard University Press, 2006)
References:
1. Statistical physics and dynamics of evolution
2. “Evolution in rapidly evolving populations”, BH Good, Harvard University (2016)
3. "Evolutionary dynamics", DS Fisher, Les Houches Course (2006)
4. "Statistical Genetics and Evolution of Quantitative Traits", RA Neher and BI Shraiman, Reviews of Modern Physics (2011)
5. "Genetic demixing and the evolution in linear stepping stone models", K. S. Korolev, Mikkel Avlund, Oskar Hallatschek, and David R. Nelson,Reviews of Modern Physics (2010)
- Teacher: Akshit Goyal