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Host: Institute for Mathematics and its Applications
Homepage: http://www.ima.umn.edu/geoscience/spring/bio_invasion.html
Description:
Invasions of exotic species or genotypes pose a major biological threat to native
biodiversity, food and fiber production, ecosystem functioning, and continued international
commercial trade. While the ecology of these invasions has begun to receive considerable attention
within the United States and internationally, understanding of the evolutionary dimensions of this
problem remains rudimentary. Adaptation by an invader may exacerbate or mitigate adverse
environmental effects, and the invader can induce evolution in native species resulting in greater or
lesser environmental impacts. Moreover, many native communities have been so highly disturbed by
human influences, that they cannot be considered in an evolutionary equilibrium. The
non-equilibrium dynamics of invasions into such communities remains unexplored. In this
symposium, some of these issues will be explored from mathematical and empirical perspectives.
This program should be of interest to mathematicians and biologists, as well as postdocs and
graduate students in these areas.
Date received: November 15, 2001
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