Modelling the tree of life
Statistical Physics and Complexity Group meeting
Modelling the tree of life
- Event time: 11:30am
- Event date: 6th March 2013
- Speaker: Fred Farrell (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
While we have good mathematical theories of how evolution works on small time scales, what happens on larger scales, as species are created and go extinct ('macroevolution') is far less well understood. In 1924, Yule invented a simple model which reproduced some observed properties of the tree of life, such as the power-law distribution of the number of species in a genus. I'll describe this model and then go into more recent attempts to describe the statistics of the tree of life.
About Statistical Physics and Complexity Group meetings
This is a weekly series of webinars on theoretical aspects of Condensed Matter, Biological, and Statistical Physics. It is open to anyone interested in research in these areas..
Find out more about Statistical Physics and Complexity Group meetings.