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Apply today for the HHMI BioInteractive Ambassador Academy! The Academy is a multi-year professional development experience designed to support evidence-based teaching practices. We’re looking for educators with diverse backgrounds and teaching contexts who are committed to centering equity in their classrooms.Patterns in Nature
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Description
In this talk, mathematical biologist Corina Tarnita discusses how spatial patterns in ecosystems provide insight into how these ecosystems function.
Regular spatial patterns occur in many different ecosystems and at various scales. In semiarid ecosystems, patterns in vegetation reflect water stress levels and how these ecosystems might respond to future changes. Another striking pattern in the African savanna is the regular arrangement of termite mounds. This pattern arises from intraspecies competition and results in an optimal packing of termite mounds across the landscape. Mathematical models developed by Tarnita and her team suggest that the spatial arrangement of the mounds makes the savanna ecosystem more likely to withstand and recover from periods of drought.
This talk is from a 2015 Holiday Lecture Series, Patterns and Processes in Ecology.
Key Terms
biomass, catastrophic collapse, colony, competition, ecological resilience, hysteresis, precipitation, vegetation
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