USING EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORY TO UNDERSTAND FOREST DIVERSITY presented by Robbin Decker, University of Texas, Austin

Any forest has a diversity of plants that live together. Given that all plants compete for the same basic resources, such as light or water, one type of plant should evolve to capture all the resources and outcompete all the others. I will use a mathematical tool called evolutionary game theory to show how the best strategy for plants to acquire light depends on the strategies of other plants in the forest. Using this framework, I will show that competition for light can result in diverse plant species coexisting in the forest rather than producing a single winner.

In Person: Darwin 103, Virtual: bit.ly/SP24_math_talks

For more information, including the complete list of this semester's speakers, visit our website: https://math.sonoma.edu/math-colloquium.