Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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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 Möbius^1,3, 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.