Dear Colleagues, Dr Alexandru Hening (Tufts University) will be visiting Mathematical Research Institute from June 17 till August 1. He will deliver three lectures and two research seminars on stochastic population dynamics; the title and description of lectures is provided below. More information about the seminars will be sent as a separate message. All lectures and seminars will be held in AGR at 2PM. Lecture 1: 24/06, Lecture 2: 25/06, Lecture 3: 2/07 Seminar 1: 4/07, Seminar 2: 9/07 TITLE OF LECTURES: Stochastic Population Dynamics: coexistence, extinction and long term behaviour ABSTRACT: One of the major tasks of mathematical ecology is to describe the dynamics of populations. In most ecosystems multiple different species interact in complex ways. Even a system with two species can exhibit complicated dynamics due to dispersion, seasonal differences, and other factors. The dynamics of species is inherently stochastic due to the random fluctuations of environmental factors. The combined effects of biotic interactions (competition, predation, mutualism) and environmental fluctuations (precipitation, temperature, sunlight) are key when trying to determine species richness. A successful way of studying this interplay is modeling the populations as discrete or continuous time Markov processes, and looking at the long-term behavior of these processes. We will start by looking at deterministic models of population dynamics in discrete and continuous time. Consequently, we will add environmental noise to these systems and analyze how this changes the long term behavior. We will look in depth at stochastic Lotka-Volterra systems (both for competition and predator-prey interactions), the dynamics of populations living in patchy environments, evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) and other examples.