Mathematical models of experimental microbial evolution

我的研究处于生态学和进化的界面，重点关注进化生态学中的两个关键问题：“是什么决定了物种多样性？”合作行为是如何进化的？“这些问题是科学界在未来十年面临的25个未解决的问题之一，这些问题在《科学》125周年纪念刊中得到了强调。科学问题还强调，我们对上述问题的理解的进步需要一个“重大的跨学科”的努力，这正是我的奖学金将解决。该奖学金是我作为一个数学建模者和一组实验微生物种群生物学家之间的合作，即牛津大学的A Buckling博士;悉尼大学的T Ferenci博士;奥克兰大学的P Rainey教授;和伦敦帝国理工学院的C MacLean博士。我将在巴斯大学工作，在那里我将为一系列旨在探索多样性和合作进化中所涉及的生态机制的项目开发数学模型。这些研究将通过对我的合作者的微生物进化实验进行数学分析和计算的现代技术来进行。

My research lies at the interface of ecology and evolution and is focused around two key questions in evolutionary ecology: 'What determines species diversity?' and 'How did cooperative behaviour evolve?' These questions are among 25 unsolved problems facing the scientific community over the coming decade highlighted in the 125th anniversary issue of Science. The Science issue also stressed that the advancement of our understanding of the issues relating to the above questions requires a 'major interdisciplinary' effort and this is precisely what my fellowship will address. The fellowship is a collaboration between myself as a mathematical modeller and a group of experimental microbial population biologists namely Dr A Buckling, University of Oxford; Dr T Ferenci, University of Sydney; Professor P Rainey, University of Auckland; and Dr C MacLean, Imperial College London. I will be based at the University of Bath where I will work on the development of mathematical models for a range of projects designed to explore ecological mechanisms involved in the evolution of diversity and cooperation. The studies will be conducted by bringing to bare modern techniques of mathematical analysis and computation on the microbial evolutionary experiments of my collaborators.