Date/Time
Date(s) - 13/03/2024
10:30 am - 11:30 am

Location: HH 312

Speaker: Geoff Wild (Western University)

Title: Inclusive-fitness Modelling Illustrated

Abstract: Biologists expect that natural selection leads organisms to appear as if they maximize their fitness. Social behaviours like altruism challenge this expectation because altruists reduce their fitness and seem to gain nothing in return. To explain behaviours like altruism, biologists have generalized the concept of fitness to include the success of an individual’s relatives. This more inclusive notion of fitness is aptly named ‘inclusive fitness’ and is purported to be the relevant maximand for the evolutionary analysis of social behaviour.

Inclusive-fitness thinking does more for us than simply offering a solution to puzzles like altruism. For mathematical biologists, it suggests technical simplifications that can reduce the dimensionality of models and make their predictions more biologically transparent. Of course, we never get something for nothing, and the application of inclusive-fitness thinking is no exception. In my talk, I will outline the price we pay for deploying these tools; I will also highlight the advantages of improved tractability and biological transparency. My presentation will focus on a particular example of altruistic behaviour, namely costly offspring dispersal in a homogeneous environment.

Geoff Wild is a Professor and the Associate Chair (Undergraduate) in the Department of Mathematics at Western University in London, Ontario. His main research interests are mathematical ecology and the evolution of social behaviours, and his work uses techniques from game theory, stochastic processes, and dynamical systems.