Modelling Biodiversity and Pattern Formation with Evolutionary Games

Understanding the origin of species diversity and the evolution of cooperation is a major scientific riddle having societal impact, like the rise of antimicrobial resistance or the loss of biodiversity. Population dynamics traditionally ignores fluctuations and considers static and homogeneous environments.

However, fluctuations arising from randomly occurring birth / death events (demographic noise) and the change of environmental conditions (environmental variability), together with the spatial dispersal, play a crucial role in how the size and composition of a population jointly evolve in time, i.e. its eco-evolutionary dynamics.

This project focuses on the ubiquitous situation where the dynamics of fluctuating populations is shaped by the coupling of demographic noise and environmental variability.

This is particularly relevant to microbial communities, where demographic noise and environmental variability are vital to understand the evolution of antimicrobial resistance, and poses many mathematical challenges.

The broad objectives will be to devise a suite of theoretical tools to describe the eco-evolutionary dynamics of microbial communities subject to coupled demographic noise and environmental variability; and study how these influence collective behaviour, the coexistence of species, as well as their ability to form spatial patterns.

The research comprises both computer simulations and analytical elements.

At various stages of the project, the student will be able to interact with collaborators (physicists and biologists) at Imperial College London and Virginia Tech, and a postdoc at Leeds This will allow the student to explore the relationships between the modelling of complex theoretical systems and real microbial populations, with a particular focus on the role of fluctuations on the evolution of antimivrobial resistance modelled as a cooperative mechanism.