Many biological systems can be adequately treated by assuming there is homogeneous mixing and reducing the system to a differential equation. In some systems, however, the spatial arrangement of individuals and stochastic effects are important. The principal investigators will use stochastic spatial models to explore four phenomena in which these effects play an important role: the unexpectedly low fraction of heterozygotes for t haplotypes in the common house mouse, the dynamics of hybrid zones which are maintained by heterozygote unfitness, attempts at using a virus to control the spread of chestnut blight, and competition of various strains of potato virus Y. This award is being jointly funded by the Computational Biology Activity, the Statistics and Probability, and the Ecological Studies programs.
