​Title of the talk: Mathematical games between plants and their mutualists

Synopsis of the talk: In this talk, I outline four stories on how to comprehend and formulate the emergence, maintenance and functioning of plants and their mutualists, from local to global scales. I start by considering the biotic interactions between plants and their mutualists as games of benefit and cost, and then discuss how we can formulate the coevolution between plants and their mutualists using the evolutionary game theory. Next, I introduce the concept of adaptive interaction switching that can explain the structure and function of mutualistic networks between plants and their mutualists. Finally, I end my talk by speculating the impact of this mutualistic interaction/feedback on species-niche relationship and plant distributions in future climates.

Bio: Professor Cang Hui is a mathematical and theoretical ecologist at Stellenbosch University. He holds a South African Research Chair in Mathematical and Theoretical Physical Biosciences, and also serves as co-affiliated researcher at African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Muizenberg and core-team member of DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology. His research focuses on developing models and theories, married with rich datasets, for explaining emerging patterns of biodiversity, networks, and traits in conservation and global change biology, especially invasion ecology. He has published more than 200 research articles and authored two books, Invasion Dynamics (Oxford University Press) and Ecological and Evolutionary Modelling (Springer). He serves the editorial board of a number of interaction journals and is a trustee of the International Initiative for Theoretical Ecology (IITE, London).

RSVP: Whitney Prins – whitney@sun.ac.za by 4 November 2019.

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