Lotka Volterra And Related Systems

In recent years, there has been a tremendous amount of research activity in the general area of population dynamics, particularly the Lotka-Volterra system, which has been a rich source of mathematical ideas from both theoretical and application points of view. In spite of the technological advances, many authors seem to be unaware of the bulk of the work that has been done in this area recently. This often leads to duplication of work and frustration to the authors as well as to the editors of various journals. This book is built out of lecture notes and consists of three chapters written by four mathematicians with overlapping expertise that cover a broad sector of the research in this area. Each chapter consists of carefully written introductory exposition, main breakthroughs, open questions and bibliographies. The chapters present recent developments on topics involving the dynamic behavior of solutions and topics such as stability theory, permanence, persistence, extinction, existence of positive solutions for the Lotka-Volterra and related systems. This fills a void in the literature, by making available a source book of relevant information on the theory, methods and applications of an important area of research.

Mathematical ecology is a subject which recently attracts attentions of many mathematicians and biologists. One of the most important and fundamental mathematical models in ecology is of Lotka-Volterra type. This book gives global dynamical properties of L-V systems. The properties analyzed are global stability of the equilibria, persistence or permanence of the systems (which ensures the survival of all the biological-species composed of the systems for the long term) and the existence of periodic or chaotic solutions. The special subject of this book is to consider the effects of the systems structure, diffusion of the biological species and time delay on the global dynamical properties of the systems.

As Eugene Wigner stressed, mathematics has proven unreasonably effective in the physical sciences and their technological applications. The role of mathematics in the biological, medical and social sciences has been much more modest but has recently grown thanks to the simulation capacity offered by modern computers. This book traces the history of population dynamics---a theoretical subject closely connected to genetics, ecology, epidemiology and demography---where mathematics has brought significant insights. It presents an overview of the genesis of several important themes: exponential growth, from Euler and Malthus to the Chinese one-child policy; the development of stochastic models, from Mendel's laws and the question of extinction of family names to percolation theory for the spread of epidemics, and chaotic populations, where determinism and randomness intertwine. The reader of this book will see, from a different perspective, the problems that scientists face when governments ask for reliable predictions to help control epidemics (AIDS, SARS, swine flu), manage renewable resources (fishing quotas, spread of genetically modified organisms) or anticipate demographic evolutions such as aging.

Mathematical ecology is a subject which recently attracts attentions of many mathematicians and biologists. One of the most important and fundamental mathematical models in ecology is of Lotka-Volterra type. This book gives global dynamical properties of L-V systems. The properties analyzed are global stability of the equilibria, persistence or permanence of the systems (which ensures the survival of all the biological-species composed of the systems for the long term) and the existence of periodic or chaotic solutions. The special subject of this book is to consider the effects of the systems structure, diffusion of the biological species and time delay on the global dynamical properties of the systems.

Coverage in this proceedings volume includes robust multilevel and hierarchical preconditioning methods, applications for large scale computations and optimization of coupled engineering problems, and applications of metaheuristics to large-scale problems.

In the 50 years that have passed since Alfred Latka's death in 1949 his position as the father of mathematical demography has been secure. With his first demographic papers in 1907 and 1911 (the latter co authored with F. R. Sharpe) he laid the foundations for stable population theory, and over the next decades both largely completed it and found convenient mathematical approximations that gave it practical applica tions. Since his time, the field has moved in several directions he did not foresee, but in the main it is still his. Despite Latka's stature, however, the reader still needs to hunt through the old journals to locate his principal works. As yet no exten sive collections of his papers are in print, and for his part he never as sembled his contributions into a single volume in English. He did so in French, in the two part Theorie Analytique des Associations Biologiques (1934, 1939). Drawing on his Elements of Physical Biology (1925) and most of his mathematical papers, Latka offered French readers insights into his biological thought and a concise and mathematically accessible summary of what he called recent contributions in demographic analy sis. We would be accurate in also calling it Latka's contributions in demographic analysis.

General principles. Kinetics. Statics. Dynamics.

Every form of behaviour is shaped by trial and error. Such stepwise adaptation can occur through individual learning or through natural selection, the basis of evolution. Since the work of Maynard Smith and others, it has been realised how game theory can model this process. Evolutionary game theory replaces the static solutions of classical game theory by a dynamical approach centred not on the concept of rational players but on the population dynamics of behavioural programmes. In this book the authors investigate the nonlinear dynamics of the self-regulation of social and economic behaviour, and of the closely related interactions between species in ecological communities. Replicator equations describe how successful strategies spread and thereby create new conditions which can alter the basis of their success, i.e. to enable us to understand the strategic and genetic foundations of the endless chronicle of invasions and extinctions which punctuate evolution. In short, evolutionary game theory describes when to escalate a conflict, how to elicit cooperation, why to expect a balance of the sexes, and how to understand natural selection in mathematical terms.