New Mathematical Approaches for Understanding Spatial Synchrony in Ecology

During this meeting we will bring together the members of the NSF Collaborative Grant, “New mathematical approaches for understanding spatial synchrony in ecology.” Our work has focused on using methods from statistical physics and dynamical systems theory to better understand synchrony in ecology. In past work we have shown that long-ranged synchrony can be initiated and maintained purely from local interactions and that the transition to synchrony can be understood within the framework of the theory of phase transitions in statistical physics.

The group has two goals during this meeting. First, we will assess our progress to date and plan for future extensions of our work and, second, we will plan a perspectives style article on topics related to grant’s theme of using tools from statistical physics to understand spatially extended collective behavior in ecology.

This meeting is supported by the National Science Foundation grants, 2325076, 2325077, 2325078.