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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 54: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems I (Joint Session BP/DY)
BP 54.6: Talk
Thursday, March 23, 2017, 16:15–16:30, ZEU 250
Dynamics of population fronts in the presence of finite-sized heterogeneities — •Wolfram Möbius1,3, Kim M. J. Alards1, Francesca Tesser1, Roberto Benzi2, David R. Nelson3, and Federico Toschi1 — 1Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands — 2Universita’ di Roma “Tor Vergata” and INFN, Rome, Italy — 3Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Populations spread on surfaces through the combined effect of dispersal and population growth on a wide range of length and time scales, yet the effect of heterogeneous environments on this spreading process is not well understood. We here investigate the effect of finite-sized features which affect dispersal or growth of the population locally. With an individual-based simulation we investigate the effect of individual features on the population front and identify a regime within which a local front speed is sufficient to predict the resulting front. Using least-time arguments we are able to describe the front dynamics for individual features and characterize how width and length of the features determine front shape at long times. These findings combined with numerical solutions of the Eikonal equation allow us to characterize the resulting effective front speed for dilute to dense random sets of features. The results advance our understanding of population and other fronts in two-dimensional irregular environments.