Evolution by Ecological Scaffolding in a Non-Synchronous Environment

Description

The evolution of multicellular entities from unicellular ancestors signalled the emergence of a new level of biological organization. It is one of the major transitions in evolution. Despite its importance, there are many open questions surrounding the start of this transition. We investigate how this transition could have occurred by constructing stochastic models which are implemented through a multilevel stochastic process taking place over multiple time scales. These models describe an inherently stochastic process called Ecological Scaffolding, by which specific ecological conditions can cause individual cells to form groups and endow them with Darwinian properties; this means the groups show variation in character, differences in reproductive output, and heritability.
Previous work has shown how this can be achieved with dispersal occurring synchronously. In this talk, we introduce a model that relaxes this assumption

Period	3 Feb 2020
Event title	ANZIAM2020: Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics Annual Meeting
Event type	Conference
Conference number	57
Location	Lovedale, Australia, New South WalesShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National