Stefano Allesina – Thu 18 Mar
A 100-year old model of population dynamics still holds some interesting secrets, says Stefano. His free online talk forms part of Ecology Live 2021.
Thursday 18 March
15:00 UK time / 11:00 US Eastern time
Stefano Allesina
University of Chicago, USA
Celebrating 100 years of Lotka-Volterra
In 1920, an excited Alfred Lotka thought he had cracked the problem of the ‘rhythm of nature’ dear to the Victorians. Lotka wrote a short article detailing an ecological model that would lead “to undamped, and hence indefinitely continued, oscillations”. In 1924, the same equations were proposed by Vito Volterra, who was inspired by data collected by his son-in-law on the effects of WWI on fisheries.
Their model is now at the foundation of much of our understanding of population dynamics and community ecology. I tell the stories behind the model and summarize a century of progress in this area. I conclude by showing that – even after 100 years – the Lotka-Volterra model still holds some interesting secrets.
Watch Stefano’s talk here
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Sponsored by Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is sponsoring this series of Ecology Live.
Their book choice for Stefano Allesina’s talk is Population Dynamics for Conservation (OUP, 2019). Enjoy an exclusive 30% discount on this book and on their full Ecology Live reading list here.
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