[bioundgrd] Fwd: PED Seminar: Philipp Altrock (Sept. 9th @ 3:00pm)

[Joyce Roberge]

The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics<http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/> presents:

"Evolutionary game dynamics in finite populations – Fixation times.<http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/events/seminar/abstracts/9-9-11.html>"

by Philipp Altrock<http://www.evolbio.mpg.de/~altrock/> (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology)

Abstract:
The evolution of finite populations is analyzed in the framework of stochastic evolutionary game dynamics. Often, one is interested in the probability that a sub-group of individuals that mutated to a new strategy spreads in the population and reaches fixation. I focus on the time such a fixation event is expected to take. A concept that allows a deeper analytical insight is weak selection. It considers only small deviations from neutral evolution, i.e., when all strategies perform equally well, and is widely believed to be a very relevant case in biology: A mutant strategy can be expected to only make a small contribution to the mutant’s overall reproductive success.
Various aspects of the fixation times under weak selection (and slightly stronger) can be addressed: How do the mean exit times depend on the fact that the reproductive success of a strategy changes with the composition of the population? How universal are the most common weak selection results when comparing the two most important classes of birth-death processes? How can the surprising effect be tackled that a beneficial mutation can take longer than any neutral mutation when taking over a population (slowdown)? And how does this slowdown depend on the system size?
An example is the migration-selection balance in populations that ‘play a coordination game’ (evolutionary dynamics of underdominance) and are distributed over ecological patches. Fixation/extinction times can serve as a quantity that characterize long phases of mutant persistence for migration below a critical threshold.

When: 3:00pm, Friday, September 9th, 2011

Where: 1 Brattle Square, 6th floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 (link to map/directions<http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/location/>)

For more info on the PED Seminar Series<http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/events/seminar/>, please contact: mwojcik at fas.harvard.edu<mailto:mwojcik at fas.harvard.edu>

———
Michael John Wojcik
Staff Assistant
Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University
1 Brattle Square, 6th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138
http://www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/
Room 623
Office: (617) 496-4737
Fax: (617) 496-4629
mwojcik at fas.harvard.edu<mailto:mwojcik at fas.harvard.edu>


Joyce Roberge
Undergraduate Program
Biology Education Office 68-120
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
31 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-4718
fax: 617-258-9329
email: roberge at mit.edu<mailto:roberge at mit.edu>





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