Thu, 18 Feb 2027
14:00 -
15:00
(This talk is hosted by Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
Tue, 27 Oct 2026
15:00 -
16:00
C3
Tue, 20 Oct 2026
15:00 -
16:00
C3
Tue, 13 Oct 2026
15:00 -
16:00
C3
Invasion graphs: the networks behind how ecological communities assemble
Dr. Violeta Calleja Solanas
(Department of Biology, Oxford University)
Abstract
Ask a complex systems’ researcher to draw an ecological network and you will likely get an interaction network: nodes are species, and links are who eats whom / who competes with whom / who pollinates whom, etc. But behind every ecological community hides a second network, the invasion graph. Each node is an entire community (a set of species able to persist together) and each directed link is an invasion: a newcomer species arrives, tries to establish, and sometimes extinguishes residents. Community assembly becomes a walk on this graph, and the graph’s structure records every history the community could have had.
In this talk, I will show how to build these graphs from generalised Lotka–Volterra dynamics and present the relationships between the structure of the invasion graph and the structure of the interaction networks among species.
Wed, 11 Nov 2026
17:00
17:00
Lecture Room 1
Does Mathematics Have Anything to do With Biology? - Philip Maini
Philip Maini
(Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford)
Further Information
No two subjects in the sciences are presented as being more different than mathematics and biology, so this is a very fair question to ask, especially as here, "mathematics" does not include statistics, while "biology" includes physiology, medicine etc. This talk will illustrate how mathematics has had a profound impact in biology.
Examples will include Alan Turing's groundbreaking work on biological pattern formation (which Philip has actually applied to football shirt patterns), Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley's Nobel Prize winning explanation for neuronal signalling, and potentially new therapies for certain cancers.
Philip Maini is Professor of Mathematical Biology and Director of the Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology in Oxford.
Please email @email to register to attend in person.
The lecture will be broadcast on the Oxford Mathematics YouTube Channel on Wednesday 02 December at 5-6 pm and any time after (no need to register for the online version).
The Oxford Mathematics Public Lectures are generously supported by XTX Markets.