Talk 1:
Inferring the Behaviour of a Wild Social Primate: What can
tri-axial accelerometers tell us?
Jack O’Sullivan
Our first speaker this week is Jack O’Sullivan.
Jack completed his BSc in Zoology at Aberystwyth University before coming to
Swansea to undertake an Mres in the Bioscience department. He has recently been
accepted onto a PhD at Newcastle University within the Institute of
Neuroscience.
Abstract:
There has been relatively little investigation into the
applicability of tri-axial accelerometers in the detection of primate
behaviour. Applying such techniques to the chacma baboons (Papio ursinus)
of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa could provide insight into the lives of
primates previously unobtainable under the constraints of direct observation.
Talk 2:
Playing Magic:
The Gathering® on networks of competitive interactions
Danis Kiziridis
Our second speaker, Danis Kiziridis initially obtained a diploma in biology, with specialization in ecology, from the School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He then moved to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for the Master in Physics of Complex Systems, organized and taught by IFISC, at the Universitat de les Illes Balears. Currently, he is a BioMaths first year PhD candidate at the Mathematics Department, Swansea University, studying growth and interactions in saprotrophic fungal communities, with the supervision and collaboration of Dr. Chenggui Yuan (Mathematics, Swansea University), Dr. Mike Fowler and Prof. Dan Eastwood (Biosciences, Swansea University), and Prof. Lynne Boddy and Dr. Jennifer Hiscox (Biosciences, Cardiff University).
Abstract:
Competition
by direct means is widespread in biological, technological, and socioeconomic
systems, e.g.: territoriality in fishes, birds and ants, but also in firms and
mafias; biological predation/parasitism, but also software/malware infection
attempts; tournaments among stags for mating, but also sports tournaments like
in boxing and fencing; and dominance interactions leading to hierarchies in
animal groups, including human organizations like companies and collectives.
Inspired by the fierce territorial fights between saprotrophic fungi, but of
general applicability, a method was developed by adopting the simple but
realistic scoring/combat system of the card game Magic: The Gathering®,
to model satisfactorily all kinds of interaction outcomes, and to quantify
offensive/defensive abilities, proposing thus testable hypotheses, and offering
quantitative insight into the (co)evolution of the ubiquitous phenomenon of
direct competition.
Talk 3:
Individual
variability in dispersal and invasion speed
Our third
speaker today is Aled Morris. Aled undertook his undergrad degree in
Mathematics and his Masters degree in Computer Modelling here at Swansea
University. He is currently doing a PhD, investigating population spread of
species.
Abstract:
The spreading speed of a population is
fundamental in ecology because it characterises the rate at which a species
invades new habitats or adapts to rapid environmental change. We use a system of reaction-diffusion partial differential
equations to model the spread of two competing phenotypes in a domain. Using
this system we look at the existence of steady states, and attempt to find
explicit expressions for the spreading speed and the ratio of phenotypes at the
leading edge.
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