"Population Dynamics Across Interacting Networks or Scales"Browne, CameronModeling the complexity of populations and ecosystems requires innovative applications of dynamical systems and differential equations. Of particular interest are multi-scale or multi-species models where components, in themselves representing commonly studied frameworks in mathematical biology, are coupled together to form complex systems. For example, ecosystems may be viewed as high-dimensional networks of interacting species. Rapidly evolving and diverse interacting populations, such as the viral ``quasi-species`` and host immune response during HIV infection, quickly build a dynamic network of multiple variants whose structure can possibly be predicted through analytical or computational tools. Another layer of complexity to consider can be connecting the interdependent scales of within-host (immunology) and between-host (epidemiology) for infectious diseases. Modeling populations across networks or scales can bring genetic, biological or spatial structure into the equation, and motivates novel application of partial or high-dimensional ordinary differential equations. In this special session, we collect a variety of speakers who model population dynamics across interacting networks or scales. |
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