Speaker: Prof. Simon Levin (Princeton) http://www.princeton.edu/~slevin/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_A._Levin Time: Friday, January 25, 2013, 2--3PM Location: the University of Sydney, Access Grid Room, Carslaw 829 Lunch with the speaker: meet at 12:20PM near the Level 2 entrance to Carslaw Building. The lunch would be at Law Annex Cafe with reservation at 12:30PM. *********************************** NOTICE: if you are local and plan to join the lunch and/or talk, we would appreciate an expression of interest by emailing zhangou@maths.usyd.edu.au *********************************** This event is also announced at AMSI website. http://www.amsi.org.au/events/forthcoming-events/998-collective-phenomena-collective-motion-and-collective-action-in-ecological-systems -------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Collective Phenomena, Collective Motion, and Collective Action in Ecological Systems Abstract: fundamental questions in basic and applied ecology alike involve complex adaptive systems, in which localized interactions among individual agents give rise to emergent patterns that feed back to affect individual behavior. In such systems, a central challenge is to scale from the microscopic to the macroscopic, in order to understand the emergence of collective phenomena, the potential for critical transitions, and the ecological and evolutionary conflicts between levels of organization. This lecture will explore some specific examples, from universality in bacterial pattern formation to collective motion and collective decision-‐making in animal groups. It also will suggest that studies of emergence, scaling and critical transitions in physical systems can inform the analysis of similar phenomena in ecological systems, while raising new challenges for theory.