Mathematical Models of Selection and Interaction Among Populations

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The proposed research will concern three areas of ecology and population biology: food webs, infectious diseases, and age- structured populations. Food webs describe which species eat which other species in a community of species. Many food webs observed in real communities have led to a mathematical model that appears to unify and explain (for the first time) a number of these empirical generalizations. The proposed research will test this mathematical model against further empirical observations and attempt to incorporate and explain other regularities about the roles of body size and distribution of biomass in communities. The goal of this basic research is to establish a better understanding of the structure of ecological communities. The hope is that good scientific tools will eventually become available to help solve applied problems, such as the accidental or intentional introduction of new species, the design of nature reserves and closed ecological life support systems, and the concentration of toxins and pollutants by ecological processes. Infectious diseases are a classical problem of public health, and a scientifically rewarding area in which study fundamental problems of population biology. One specific problem to be investigated is how to predict the effect of malaria control programs on death rates in developing countries. A mathematical model will be developed and calibrated against a real malaria control program in Africa. Another specific problem to be investigated is why hosts and parasites have so many strategies of defense (e.g., antibody clones) and attack (e.g., antigenic variants or strains). Age-structured populations include human populations, many other animal populations and many plant populations. A common problem is to estimate future numbers of individuals in each age class. The goal of the proposed work is to develop improved techniques for preparing projections, and estimates of the uncertainty of projections, that take account of random variation in the birth and death rates that the population has experienced and will experience.