Hello all,

We are organising an online talk on Thursday next week as a part of the seminar series "Adaptive Behaviour in Non-neuronal Systems" that will interest some of you. More information on the talk below, and on the series, here: https://groups.google.com/g/adabiosys-lectures

How can collective functionality structure species-rich communities?
June 25, 17:00-18:00 CEST
Zoom link: https://umontpellier-fr.zoom.us/j/98560358832

Abstract:
Random matrices have been widely used to represent the effect of nonlinearities in communities composed of a large number of species, when the details of interactions are unknown. Models such as the disordered Lotka-Volterra equations, despite being simplistic, adequately describe a range of statistical patterns of microbial communities, such as abundance distributions. However, microbial communities are typically structured by species traits, for instance, through the utilization of common resources, by the existence of functional groups, or by phylogenetic distance. I will use a set of high-dimensional models that admit effective, low-dimensional descriptions to address two complementary questions. First, what is the effect of low-dimensional features on the dynamics of otherwise disordered communities? And second, what is the possible evolutionary origin of the structure that underpins community function?

About the speaker:
Silvia De Monte is a researcher at the Institute of Biology of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, in the Eco-Evo Math group and at the Department for Evolutionary Theory at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, where she leads the research group "Dynamics of Microbial Collectives". Her research is focused on the ecological processes underpinning evolution in phenotypically and genetically heterogeneous cellular assemblies. Detailed information about her various research projects is available on her website - https://www.bio.ens.psl.eu/~demonte/.

Please do share and spread the word. In case of any questions, contact me at gautham [dot] ganesh [at] cbs [dot] cnrs [dot] fr.

Best,
Gautham

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