Publications
Sensitivity of Self-Organized Speciation to Long Distance Dispersal
2007 IEEE Symposium on Artificial Life , , , 2007
Status: Published
Citations:
Cite: [bibtex]
Abstract: Previous work has shown that speciation can result from the self-organized accumulation of multiple mildly underdominant (nearly neutral) loci in a continuous population, when mating is spatially localized. In contrast, when mating is panmictic, underdominance is quickly eliminated and the population always converges on a single genotype, as predicted by mean-field approximations. The focus of this work is to examine the sensitivity of selforganizing speciation to the assumption of purely localized interactions. We alter the interaction topology from nearest neighbor interactions to panmictic interactions in two ways: (i) by increasing the size of the contiguous mating neighborhoods and (ii) by allowing for long-distance dispersal of individuals with increasing probability. Our results show self-organized speciation to be robust to mating neighborhood sizes significantly larger than nearest neighbor interactions and to probabilities of long-distance dispersal that fall well into the range of so called “small-world ” interaction topologies
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Bongard's work focuses on understanding the general nature of cognition, regardless of whether it is found in humans, animals or robots. This unique approach focuses on the role that morphology and evolution plays in cognition. Addressing these questions has taken him into the fields of biology, psychology, engineering and computer science.
Continuous Self-Modeling. Science 314, 1118 (2006). [Journal Page]

Danforth is an applied mathematician interested in modeling a variety of physical, biological, and social phenomenon. He has applied principles of chaos theory to improve weather forecasts as a member of the Mathematics and Climate Research Network, and developed a real-time remote sensor of global happiness using messages from Twitter: the Hedonometer. Danforth co-runs the Computational Story Lab with Peter Dodds, and helps run UVM's reading group on complexity.

Laurent studies the interaction of structure and dynamics. His research involves network theory, statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics along with their applications in epidemiology, ecology, biology, and sociology. Recent projects include comparing complex networks of different nature, the coevolution of human behavior and infectious diseases, understanding the role of forest shape in determining stability of tropical forests, as well as the impact of echo chambers in political discussions.

Hines' work broadly focuses on finding ways to make electric energy more reliable, more affordable, with less environmental impact. Particular topics of interest include understanding the mechanisms by which small problems in the power grid become large blackouts, identifying and mitigating the stresses caused by large amounts of electric vehicle charging, and quantifying the impact of high penetrations of wind/solar on electricity systems.

Bagrow's interests include: Complex Networks (community detection, social modeling and human dynamics, statistical phenomena, graph similarity and isomorphism), Statistical Physics (non-equilibrium methods, phase transitions, percolation, interacting particle systems, spin glasses), and Optimization(glassy techniques such as simulated/quantum annealing, (non-gradient) minimization of noisy objective functions).