Biomathematics Seminar Series - Christopher Greyson-Gaito

Speaker:  Christopher Greyson-Gaito, McMaster University

Title: Resilience Across Complex Systems in a Variable World

Abstract:

With human-caused changes to the world, disturbances are likely to increase. Understanding how our biological systems will react and persist in the face of disturbances is, consequently, critical. The concept of resilience addresses how systems maintain structure and function in response to disturbances. Notably, most resilience research addresses how systems maintain structure and function in the face of single disturbances. Recent research is beginning to examine resilience in response to multiple discrete deterministic or stochastic disturbances. Yet, we know that alongside an increasing frequency of disturbances, variability will similarly increase. Considering this future increase in variability, incorporating variability into resilience research is a useful direction. One important aspect within resilience research is how shocks or variability are either amplified or muted, where amplification can be detrimental or useful depending on the system. In this presentation, I will explore amplification and muting of variability in consumer-resource interactions and in bacteria-bacteriophage interactions. I will follow up with some current collaborative work on time delays with future ideas stemming from this work.

For a list of upcoming Biomathematics Seminars please visit the following website https://mathstat.uoguelph.ca/node/414