Oliver Meacock -- Growth accelerations bridge the mechanistic and ecosystem scales in microbiomes [IN PERSON]
| Dates: | 23 March 2026 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Department of Mathematics |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Oliver Meacock |
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Join us for this seminar by Oliver Meacock (Sheffield) as part of the Maths in the Life Sciences seminar series (and the online North West Seminar Series in Mathematical Biology and Data Sciences in collaboration with Liverpool Universities).
Title: Growth accelerations bridge the mechanistic and ecosystem scales in microbiomes
Abstract: Microbiomes are ecosystems in miniature. Ecological interactions between microbial populations are generally mediated through their shared chemical environment, for example via competition for shared nutrients or exchange of secreted metabolites. Understanding how these mechanistic processes shape the ecological properties of communities is a fundamental problem that remains largely unresolved. I will present new results that provide a general link between the mechanistic and ecosystem perspectives by assuming that growth accelerations, rather than rates, are the quantitative basis of ecosystem dynamics. The resulting equations reveal the common origins of temporal, spatial and environmental dependencies of interaction strengths, resolve how strong mutualisms can remain stable, and show how to achieve pairwise additivity of interactions without resorting to higher order terms. I will also discuss the implications for our interpretation of the parameters of the generalised Lotka-Volterra equation, which display counterintuitive trends as mechanistic processes (such as metabolite secretion rates) are varied. These findings resolve the long-standing challenge of connecting niche theory to coexistence theory, with implications for a broad range of ecological and evolutionary questions.
The talk will be also be streamed via Teams, please contact carl.whitfield@manchester.ac.uk or igor.chernyavsky@manchester.ac.uk for the link, or sign up to the mailing list.
To subscribe to the mailing list for this event series, please send an e-mail with the phrase “subscribe math-lifesci-seminar” in the message body to listserv@listserv.manchester.ac.uk
Speaker
Oliver Meacock
Role: Early Career Research Fellow
Organisation: University of Sheffield
Travel and Contact Information
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2.61
Simon Building
Manchester
