Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 36: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems IV (joint with BP)
DY 36.1: Talk
Friday, March 15, 2013, 09:30–09:45, H44
Range expansions in heterogeneous environments — •Wolfram Möbius1, Andrew W. Murray2, and David R. Nelson1 — 1Department of Physics and FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA — 2FAS Center for Systems Biology and Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
How species invade new territories and how these range expansions influence a population’s genetic diversity are important questions in the field of population genetics. While the majority of work addressing these questions focuses on well-mixed environments, populations on a set of islands, or spatially uniform environments, much less is known about the consequences of an expanding population encountering obstacles such as lakes or mountain ranges.
We employ both experimental and theoretical methods to better understand range expansions in such types of environments. In particular, we established a system of bacteriophage T7 and E. coli as a bench-scale model system: The bacteriophage population spreads on a lawn of susceptible bacteria while a region of resistant bacteria poses an obstacle to the population wave and determines its shape. We use reaction-diffusion modeling and a phenomenological description to complement the experimental results. In addition, stochastic modeling allows us to study the fate of individual alleles in the course of the range expansion.