Mathematics of Darwin's Legacy. Mathematics and Biosciences in Interaction

The Mathematics of Darwin's Legacy presents a general overview of mathematical models in the context of evolution. It covers a wide range of topics such as population genetics, population dynamics, speciation, adaptive dynamics, game theory, kin selection, and stochastic processes. Written by leading scientists working at the interface between evolutionary biology and mathematics the book is the outcome of a conference commemorating Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, and the 150th anniversary of the first publication of his book "On the origin of species". Its chapters vary in format between general introductory and state-of-the-art research texts in biomathematics, in this way addressing both students and researchers in mathematics, biology and related fields. Mathematicians looking for new problems as well as biologists looking for rigorous description of population dynamics will find this book fundamental.



The book contains a full range of articles, varying from general introductory texts to state-of-the-art research in biomathematics, with topics ranging from population genetics, population dynamics, speciation, adaptive dynamics, game theory, kin selection, and stochastic processes. Advanced students and researchers in mathematics, biology and related fields will profit of 11 invited articles of leading researchers in the interface between evolutionary biology and mathematics written on the occasion of the sesquicentennial year of the publication of Darwin's masterpiece "On the Origins of Species". This is book is perfect both for a newbie in the subject and for a specialist looking for a broad and update view in one of the most active fields of research. Mathematicians looking for new problems as well as biologists looking for rigorous description of population dynamics will find this book fundamental.

From the contents:
Preface.- What changes has mathematics made to the Darwinian theory? by Warren J. Ewens.- The mathematics of Darwin s theory of evolution: 1859 and 150 years later by Peter Schuster.- Some Mathematical Models in Evolutionary Genetics by Reinhard Bürger.- Extinction, Persistence, and Evolution by Peter Jagers.- Group Theory in Homogeneous Populations (Rescuing Darwin from the mud) by Peter Taylor.- Evolutionary dynamics of collective action by Jorge M. Pacheco, Francisco C. Santos, Max O. Souza and Brian Skyrms.- On kin and group selection, and the haystack model by Vincent A. A. Jansen.- Population formulation of adaptative meso-evolution: theory and numerics by Sepideh Mirrahimi, Benoît Perthame, Emeric Bouin and Pierre Millien.- Random Modeling of Adaptive Dynamics and Evolutionary Branching by Sylvie Méléard.- Thoughts on the geometry of meso-evolution: collecting mathematical elements for a postmodern synthesis by J.A.J. (Hans) Metz.- When do optimisation arguments make evolutionary sense? by Mats Gyllenberg, J.A.J. (Hans) Metz and Robert Service.- Bibliography.- Index.




Fabio Chalub is BSc and MSc in Physics and PhD in Mathematics. In the last 10 years has been working in mathematical modelling in life sciences. He has more than 20 scientific articles in leading international journals and is also active in the field of scientific diffusion. Since 2003 lives in Portugal where he is now Assistant Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
José Francisco Rodrigues is PhD in Mathematics, member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, president of the International Centre of Mathematics and full professor at University of Lisbon. He had published over 100 scientific papers, coedited 15 books, authored 1 book and is the coordinating editor of "Interfaces and Free Boundaries".