Speaker: Damon Toth, Applied Mathematics
Title:
Time: 3:30 PM, Thursday, 5/12/05
Place: Guggenheim Room 408d
Abstract:
Chemostat models are resource-based models for populations of microorganisms. They can produce a full range of dynamic outcomes and also lend themselves to testing in a laboratory. I will present our work on chemostat models and show how age structure can interact with other nonlinear effects to result in limit cycles. The model presented is a combination of two models: a standard chemostat model for a single population feeding on an abiotic resource and an age-structured model (due to Gurtin and MacCamy) in which the organism's age-specific reproduction follows a gamma distribution. Limit cycles can occur in all cases of our model, even one in which strictly logistic behavior occurs for each of the two component models. I may also present a predator--prey--resource model with age structure for the predator and show that limit cycles can arise in complicated regimes of parameter space.
Everyone welcome!