Save the Date! Next year's conference will take place May 3-6, 2027, at Stanford University.
June 1-5, 2026 - The Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics
Photos from ICERM.
The schedule can be found on the ICERM website and below.
Monday, June 01, 2026
8:30 - 8:50 AM EDT
Check In
11th Floor Collaborative Space
8:50 - 9:00 AM EDT
Welcome
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Brendan Hassett, ICERM/Brown University
9:00 - 9:20 AM EDT
Comparing gene trees to family trees
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Simon Gravel, McGill University
Session Chair
Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, Brown University
Abstract
Relatedness between individuals can be measured at the genealogical level (by describing shared ancestors in a pedigree) or at a genetic level (by describing shared haplotypes across the genome). The shared haplotype structure can be conveniently summarized as a sequence of trees along the genome, where each tree describes the last shared genetic ancestors between individuals at a locus. While many tools exist to infer tree sequences from genetic data, and many large pedigree datasets are available, few tools exist to identify the relationship between the two – finding which genetic ancestor corresponds to which pedigree ancestor, and conversely. In this presentation, we propose an algorithm to solve this problem by pro viding, for each genetic tree, the list of all consistent ancestry paths within a genealogical tree. Contrasting gene trees and family trees enables the discovery of errors in both relatedness summaries -- we discuss consequences for ancestral recombination graph inference and historical reconstructions.
9:30 - 9:50 AM EDT
Quenched coalescent for diploid exchangeable population models given the pedigree
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Session Chair
Louis Fan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Session Chair
Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, Brown University
Abstract
In theoretical population genetics, it is customary to describe the genealogy of a genetic sample by averaging over the population pedigree, that is, the global graph of reproductive relationships. This assumption underlies classical work on the Kingman coalescent, related theories of multiple mergers, and many state-of-the-art statistical tools. Yet this averaging perspective is questionable: in reality, there is only one population pedigree, and all genetic information is transmitted through that same pedigree. In this talk, I will discuss recent developments in quenched, or conditioned, coalescent theory. The goal is to understand how a fixed population pedigree shapes the genealogical relationships of a sample of gene copies at a single genetic locus. Using diploid exchangeable models, we obtain novel scaling limits for the conditional genealogy of an arbitrary sample of size (n) as the population size (N) tends to infinity. These limits retain essential information about the underlying pedigree and reveal features that are lost under the usual averaging approach. Our results provide new insight into ancestral inference and into the interpretation of multi-locus genetic data from populations whose single-locus genealogies are governed by multiple-merger coalescents. Joint work with F. Alberti, M. Birkner, D. Diamantidis, M. Newman, and J. Wakeley.
10:00 - 10:30 AM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
10:30 - 10:50 AM EDT
Demographic and Selection Inferences Using Ancestral Recombination Graphs.
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Xinzhu (April) Wei, Cornell University
Session Chair
Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, Brown University
Abstract
Inferences of demographic history and natural selection are central themes in population genetics. Recent advances in ancestral recombination graph (ARG) inference offer new opportunities to address these long-standing problems. In the first part, I will introduce mrpast, a method that leverages ARGs for complex demographic inference. By modeling pairwise coalescence times within ARGs through a composite likelihood framework, mrpast enables accurate joint estimation of demographic parameters, including changes in effective population size, admixture proportions, migration rates, and epoch times. We apply mrpast to reconstruct the demographic histories of Eurasian and admixed American populations. In the second part, I will present PAC, a neutrality test that uses marginal coalescent trees within ARGs to identify genomic regions under selection. We show that PAC attains high power and sensitivity for detecting a range of selective scenarios, including hard, soft, partial, and ancient sweeps, as well as balancing selection. Moreover, PAC improves localization of causal variants. Together, these approaches demonstrate how rich information in ARGs can be used to improve demographic and selection inference in population genetics.
11:00 - 11:20 AM EDT
Analysing recombination rate variation using genealogies
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Anastasia Ignatieva, University of Oxford
Session Chair
Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, Brown University
Abstract
Ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs) can now be reconstructed from thousands of sequences genome-wide. These genealogies record the shared coalescence, mutation and recombination events in the history of the sample. They also naturally capture local haplotype structure, enabling the analysis of recombination rate variation between different ancestral lineages. Modelling the persistence of clades of samples along the genome under the SMC' model, and comparing the observed genomic spans of haplotype blocks to theoretical expectations, reveals regions of strong localised recombination suppression. Applying this to human data, we identify several novel and known structural variants partly driving this signal, including large inversions. We also identify clades with longer-than-expected spans perfectly overlapping single genes, potentially indicative of allele-dependent crossover suppression in genes expressed during meiosis. I will talk about this and other recent work on using ARGs to study the evolution of recombination landscapes through time.
11:30 - 11:50 AM EDT
Coalescent structure through time
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
John Novembre, University of Chicago
Session Chair
Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, Brown University
Abstract
A fundamental fact of biological variation is that structured patterns of mating in the past have structured the variation we observe today. Many frameworks to understand this past structure have been developed (e.g., PCA, admixture models, multi-species coalescent models), yet there are many tradeoffs. Here, we seek to provide a new framework leveraging how in recent years there has been immense progress in the reconstruction of coalescent histories of ancestral lineages across the genome (i.e. ancestral recombination graphs, ARGs). We introduce a novel time-dependent embedding based on pairwise coalescent rates between the ancestors of observed haplotypes. An advantage of this embedding is that it reflects how processes of both population size change and limited migration have structured the coalescent process that explains contemporary genetic variation. We also provide an inference scheme that solves the embedding as a latent position model, and demonstrate its utility through simulation and applications to data from chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans. The results of the method provide insight on the time-scales of structure in genetic ancestry, providing a retrospective view of the coalescent structure that shapes observations of genetic variation today.
12:00 - 1:30 PM EDT
Lunch/Free Time
1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT
Connections between ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs) and phylogenetic networks: theory, inference and applications
Problem Session - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Moderator
Puneeth Deraje, University of Toronto
2:30 - 3:30 PM EDT
GHIST tutorial
Tutorial - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Ryan Gutenkunst, University of Arizona
Session Chair
Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, Brown University
3:30 - 4:00 PM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
4:00 - 4:15 PM EDT
Noise and determinism in Trinidadian guppies
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Harman Jaggi, Princeton University
Session Chair
Joanna Masel, University of Arizona
Abstract
Natural populations are nonlinear and exhibit substantial variability. Such variability can shift equilibria, amplify fluctuations, or in some cases push populations toward collapse. A central question is to examine how stochasticity interacts with and alters population dynamics. A related question is whether fluctuations arise primarily from intrinsic density regulation or extrinsic environmental variation. We address these using long-term time series of Trinidadian guppies and show guppy populations follow a stochastic logistic equation, with multiplicative environmental noise. We examine the dynamics of fluctuations using local stability analysis and develop stochastic bifurcation theory to show how fluctuations can alter equilibrium structure. These diagnostics let us rank streams by proximity to a noise-driven regime shift, offering new insights that are likely to be missed by conventional Early Warning System metrics. Finally, using spectral analysis we separate intrinsic fluctuations from external periodicities, revealing how populations filter environmental variability into their characteristic dynamics. Together, these results show that stochasticity is not merely added noise but alters resilience and vulnerability by reshaping stability landscapes.
4:15 - 4:30 PM EDT
Population Abundance in Single-Species Patch Models
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Daozhou Gao, Cleveland State University
Session Chair
Joanna Masel, University of Arizona
Abstract
Understanding how animal movement shapes total population size and its spatial distribution in heterogeneous environments is a central question in spatial ecology. Over the past decades, research in this area has expanded substantially—moving from two-patch systems to multi-patch networks, from continuous-time to discrete-time frameworks, from single-species to metacommunity, from discrete to continuous space, and from deterministic to stochastic formulations, as well as from purely theoretical studies to experimental validation. In this talk, I will focus on single-species multi-patch logistic models and present some recent results on how both local and global population abundance depend on dispersal rate. In particular, I will highlight emerging patterns of monotonicity and non-monotonicity, the increasing complexity that arises in systems with three or more patches, and their ecological implications for understanding movement-driven population regulation.
4:30 - 4:45 PM EDT
From Evolutionary Rescue to Spillover: How Does Stabilizing Selection and Clonality Influence Emergence Into a Novel Plant Host?
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Claire Godineau, University of Florida
Session Chair
Joanna Masel, University of Arizona
Abstract
Spillover events pose major challenges in agriculture and public health, yet the mechanisms that allow or prevent pathogen establishment remain unclear. Preventing spillover requires understanding the factors that facilitate adaptation and population recovery in a new host—that is, the conditions enabling evolutionary rescue after colonization of a novel habitat (i.e. host). I study spillover by modeling a pathogen moving from its endemic host (e.g., Microstegium infected by Bipolaris) to a novel host such as hemp. Infection efficiency is likely under stabilizing selection because both insufficient and excessive infection effort reduce pathogen fitness. Hosts can impose different selective pressures—through physical barriers, tissue chemistry, and immune sensitivity—that alter both the trait optima and the curvature of the stabilizing selection function on infection efficiency. Previous studies show that evolutionary rescue is favored when hosts have similar optima, dispersal is intermediate, and clonality is partial, but these models assume equal strength of the stabilizing selection function across hosts. In reality, differences in the width of the stabilizing selection function are likely. The net effect of selection strength on persistence depends on how trait means and genetic variances evolve under selection, dispersal, and clonality. Here, I explore how differences in selection strength interact with habitat divergence, dispersal, and clonality to shape spillover likelihood. Results show that strong stabilizing selection in the spillover host is a major, underrecognized barrier to establishment. It interacts with dispersal to shape trait means and genetic variances, with direct consequences for maladaptation and persistence. Clonality further increases persistence by reducing recombination load and promoting local adaptation, particularly under strong stabilizing selection. These findings suggest that modifying selection curvature through host traits or management practices—such as diversifying resistance profiles —may help limit pathogen establishment after spillover.
4:45 - 5:00 PM EDT
The Evolution and Ecology of Migratory Coupling in Wolves
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Talia Borofsky, Princeton University
Session Chair
Joanna Masel, University of Arizona
Abstract
Migratory coupling is a predator movement strategy in which predators migrate seasonally to track migratory prey. While many wolf populations hunt migratory prey, few are known to migrate with their prey. The only well document example is in Northern Quebec, where wolves that hunt migratory caribou show a striking polymorphism: some remain in their boreal forest territories all year while others migrate up to the tundra along with caribou. This pattern is surprising because migratory wolves may abandon territories each summer and then need to re-establish themselves among conspecifics in winter. We investigate the evolution of migratory coupling in a predator-prey system to identify which ecological conditions favor migratory predators, and in particular, which conditions favor a polymorphism. By incorporating the time or energy cost of being territorial into the functional response, we show that increased prey populations decreases the number of territorial fights. Thus when caribou return to the boreal ecosystem, there should be fewer territorial fights, creating room for migratory predators to coexist with territorial and stationary conspecifics. Meanwhile, the departure of caribou in the fall increases territorial fights, favoring the migration of some predators. Further results are forthcoming, and will be ready by the workshop.
5:00 - 6:30 PM EDT
Reception
11th Floor Collaborative Space
Tuesday, June 02, 2026
9:00 - 9:20 AM EDT
Drivers of extinction risk in social animals
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Brian Lerch, UC Davis
Session Chair
Erol Akçay, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
Understanding the features of a population that predict its extinction risk is a vital basic and applied question in ecology. No systematic theoretical exploration has been conducted to understand the drivers of extinction risk in social animals, even though the dynamics of socially structured populations fundamentally differ from the dynamics of populations without social groups. We model the persistence and extinction of social populations using a branching process that tracks the number of social groups to consider how patterns of within-group growth and social group fissions influence extinction risk. We find that social group size, but not total population size, is a key predictor of persistence time. Extinction risk is primarily driven by i) the stable size of social groups, ii) group fission rate, and iii) patterns of within-group density dependence. Populations consisting of larger social groups are far less extinction prone. Higher fission rates reduce extinction risk with logistic growth, but fission rates have a non-monotonic U-shaped effect on extinction risk with an Allee effect. We clarify unique drivers of extinction in social populations and suggest theoretically informed strategies for the conservation and management of social populations.
9:30 - 9:50 AM EDT
Using thermal performance curves and population dynamics to improve forecasts of extinction risk in variable environments.
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
David Vasseur, Yale University
Session Chair
Erol Akçay, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
Thermal Performance Curves (TPCs) have become a popular tool for assessing the risk that climate warming and variability pose for species. These assessments typically rely upon measures of the match between a TPC and a population’s environment that doesn’t account for the outsized impact that stressful events such as heat waves can have on populations. To better capture the impact of short-term, but potentially catastrophic events, requires a better integration of environmental variation into population dynamic models. In this talk, I discuss a series of recent projects comprising both models and microcosm experiments, that are leading us toward a generalized representation of temperature-dependent population dynamics. I use methods from stochastic calculus to derive a simple metric of extinction risk under idealized assumptions and demonstrate the continued utility of this metric for predicting extinction risk in thermally varying environments.
10:00 - 10:30 AM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
10:30 - 10:50 AM EDT
Population growth rates in spatially heterogeneous and changing environments
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Elizabeth Crone, University of California, Davis
Session Chair
Erol Akçay, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
Ecologists have a long tradition of modeling population dynamics using structured population models. Most often, these models are structured by individual age, size, or life stage. However, such models can also be structured to describe spatial heterogeneity, where classes are sites with different conditions and transitions are movement between sites. In spatially-structured models, the long-term metapopulation growth rate (i.e., the leading eigenvalue of the transition matrix) is generally larger than the "average" growth rate because a higher proportion of individuals are in higher quality sites. In changing environments, the spatial distribution of individuals lags behind current environmental quality, leading to transient dynamics with a lower metapopulation population growth rate in the short term. In this talk, I review this longstanding but not widely appreciated implication of structured population dynamics, in the context of interpreting population trends and potential geographic range shifts of butterflies in the United States.
11:00 - 11:20 AM EDT
Disturbance-generated competitive coexistence
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Annette Ostling, University of Texas, Austin
Session Chair
Erol Akçay, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
Disturbance is present in many systems, and a key hypothesized mechanism of competitive coexistence is that it allows different life-history strategies to coexist, enabling types better at exploiting empty patches it creates to coexist with better-competitor types. Prior approaches demonstrating this provided limited insight due to considering only patch-scale dynamics. Here we analyze a partial-differential-equation model in which larger-scale competitive dynamics emerge from within-patch population dynamics of species competing for patches subject to disturbance. This model provides a list of several within-patch demographic trade-offs enabling large-scale coexistence that prior models could not. Most do not scale up to patch-level trade-offs previously emphasized, as recruitment preemption of one type by another is not necessary to their action. Furthermore, many are trade-offs ecologists presume to be purely equalizing, involving only components of intrinsic growth. Our work provides a shift in focus in disturbance-generated coexistence theory, to within-patch demographic strategy differences that enable it.
11:30 - 11:50 AM EDT
Linking plant traits and species coexistence with mechanistic models
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Jacob Levine, Duke University
Session Chair
Erol Akçay, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract
One of the most promising applications of plant functional traits is to explain the coexistence of competing species. Yet ecologists have so far struggled to link traits and coexistence, limiting our ability to predict how plant communities will respond to global change. Here, I show how mechanistic models of plant community dynamics grounded in ecophysiology provide a path forward for understanding coexistence from functional traits and forecasting shifts in biodiversity and ecosystem function under global change. First, I present a theoretical model of competition for water and light among diverse assemblages of plants. I then use insights from this model to identify diversity-maintaining functional tradeoffs among co-occurring species in a national forest inventory dataset. Finally, I demonstrate that the model’s predictions for shifts in plant biodiversity under intensifying precipitation regimes are consistent with global biogeographic patterns in plant hydraulic traits
12:00 - 1:30 PM EDT
Lunch/Free Time
1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT
What is fitness?
Problem Session - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Moderator
Joanna Masel, University of Arizona
1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT
Bridging the gap between simple dynamical models and ABMs
Problem Session - 10th Floor Classroom
Moderator
Rohan Mehta, Elmhurst University
2:30 - 3:30 PM EDT
Poster Session
10th Floor Collaborative Space
3:30 - 4:00 PM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
4:00 - 4:15 PM EDT
There are no unlinked loci: how pedigrees couple neutral genealogies across the genome
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Maximillian Newman, University of Chicago
Session Chair
Gili Greenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract
Implicit in current population genetic methods is the assumption that genes far enough apart in the genome, such as on different chromsosomes, have independent genealogies. These gene genealogies, however, are subject to the same pedigree, the random graph capturing the reproductive history of the population. I will describe how the pedigree of both well-mixed and structured populations captures macroscopic population events, and how these events couple genealogies across the genome. In particular, I will explain how neutral gene genealogies far apart on the genome are only independent in the absence of large migraitons and uneven offspring distributions. These results suggest that genome-wide association statistics, which aggregate weak signals across many loci, may be sensitive to pedigree-induced correlations even between unlinked regions of the genome.
4:15 - 4:30 PM EDT
Expected value of the Sackin index under biased speciation models
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Daniel Bauman, Stanford University
Session Chair
Gili Greenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract
Models of random phylogenetic trees are important mathematical tools in the analysis of phylogenetic data. Tree balance is a property of phylogenetic trees that helps describe and compare tree shapes and that can vary substantially among phylogenetic models. Here, we investigate the Sackin index, one of the oldest and most widely used tree balance measures, under a variety of phylogenetic models beyond the standard Yule and Uniform models. A general biased speciation model is a biologically interpretable tree-generating model in which species branch into pairs of descendants according to an intrinsic branching rate, which is then split between the pair of descendants. The proportion of the branching rate of the parent that is assigned to each descendant, the split fraction, is a model parameter. Our main result is a formula for the expected value of the Sackin index under the general biased speciation model. Special cases of the general biased speciation model include a case that sets the split fraction to be a constant for each branching event, and two special cases inspired by the Aldous beta-splitting model: a random choice of split fraction is sampled independently at each branching event, and drawn from a symmetric beta distribution in the Blum–François beta-splitting model or an asymmetric beta distribution in the Sainudiin–Véber beta-splitting model. As a corollary of our main result, we find formulas for the expected value of the Sackin index under these three cases of the biased speciation model. We use the formulas to study how the balance of trees depends on the model parameters. Finally, because the Yule model is a special case of the Blum–François beta-splitting model, we find a new proof for the classical result describing the expected value of the Sackin index under the Yule model
4:30 - 4:45 PM EDT
Recovering signatures of archaic introgression using ancestral recombination graphs
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Arjun Biddanda, Johns Hopkins University
Session Chair
Gili Greenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract
Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes have reshaped our understanding of archaic introgression. Yet, the limited number of archaic genomes sequenced and the reliance on unadmixed outgroups have left much of this history unresolved. We introduce TRACE, a method to identify archaic ancestry using features of ancestral recombination graphs inferred from contemporary genomes alone. Simulations show that TRACE reliably detects archaic introgression without requiring archaic genomes or unadmixed outgroups. Applied to 1000 Genomes data, TRACE recovers known Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression and reveals signals of ghost admixture from previously uncharacterized hominins in both Africans and non-Africans. Strikingly, ghost ancestry persists in Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry deserts, challenging their interpretation as Homo sapiens-specific regions. In Oceanians, TRACE finds deep lineages enriched in Denisovan––and not Neanderthal––regions, supporting a model of super-archaic gene flow. TRACE provides a scalable framework for mapping the legacy of archaic introgression in the absence of archaic genome sequences.
4:45 - 5:00 PM EDT
Beyond Membership Proportions: The Role of Inferred Ancestral Allele Frequencies in Population Structure Analysis
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Xiran Liu, Brown University
Session Chair
Gili Greenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract
In admixture models such as the one used by ADMIXTURE (Alexander et al., 2009), inference typically produces both a membership matrix, Q, which describes the proportion of each individual’s genome assigned to inferred ancestral populations, and an allele-frequency matrix, P, which characterizes allele frequencies at each SNP in those inferred populations. While Q is the primary output and is widely used in population structure analysis, P often receives far less attention, despite being generated simultaneously. We explore how this often-overlooked output can provide additional insight into population structure and support downstream inference tasks. In this work, we investigate the properties of inferred ancestral allele frequencies and evaluate their utility for unsupervised local ancestry inference in an unphased diploid setting. This unsupervised perspective is particularly appealing given the limitations of conventional local ancestry methods, which typically depend on existing reference panels. We assess the approach using both simulated data and real data from the 1000 Genomes Project. Preliminary results suggest that the P matrix can support unsupervised local ancestry inference in admixed individuals, even when some pure-source reference panels are absent from the data. Beyond local ancestry inference, prior work in ancient DNA has used inferred allele frequencies across temporally structured ancestral populations to study selection, motivating another use of P: extracting SNP-level information on a shared scale across ancestral sources for integrative and comparative analyses across temporal and spatial contexts. This is particularly valuable in ancient DNA settings, where data are often sparse. Similar topic-model frameworks have also been applied in other biological settings, where the analogous P matrix provides feature-level insight, for example into the cells or genes driving cancer progression. More broadly, these directions suggest that inferred ancestral allele frequencies may complement and extend membership-based population structure analysis, with potential applications for studying local ancestry, identifying ancestry-informative markers, and examining population patterns across scales.
Wednesday, June 03, 2026
9:00 - 9:20 AM EDT
Quantifying selection on the nonsynonymous human mutation spectrum
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Ryan Gutenkunst, University of Arizona
Session Chair
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University
Abstract
Mutation rates and fitness effects are often treated as independent, but mutation rates are variable and evolve under indirect selection. For example, human European populations experienced a transient increase in the 3-mer mutation rate TCC -> TTC in the past 20,000 years. To quantify indirect selection on mutation spectra, we developed an approach to estimate the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of nonsynonymous 3-mer mutation types, by analyzing pairs of inverse mutation types to account for GC-biased gene conversion and ancestral state misidentification. We then applied this approach to all 96 possible 3-mer mutation types in humans, using data from the 1000 Genomes Project. We found widely varying DFEs among mutation types that are strongly correlated with amino acid exchangabilities. Our DFE estimate for TCC -> TTC mutations is consistent with recent theoretical predictions by Milligan, Amster, and Sella of scenarios under which a moderate number of modifier loci could yield population-specific transient bursts of a specific mutation type. More broadly, we find evidence for fine-tuning of the human mutation spectrum to reduce deleterious mutation effects.
9:30 - 9:50 AM EDT
Stochastic models for ovarian follicle stem cell behavior in Drosophila
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Simon Tavaré, Columbia University
Session Chair
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University
Abstract
The Kalderon lab at Columbia studies the behavior and regulation of follicle stem cells (FSCs) within the germarium in the adult ovary. They used the MARCM system to generate GFP-labeled clones in dividing cells of young females, from which observations of the number of labeled FSCs in layer 1 (L1) and layer 2 (L2), and the presence or absence of differentiated follicle cells (FCs) after six days were found for a number of different experimental conditions. Among other things, we are interested in estimating the division and differentiation rates of FSCs. This has an interesting stochastic modeling component, which we approached using three-compartment birth-death processes with population size regulation. Models like this have intractable likelihoods, so for statistical inference we resorted to ABC distributional random forests. To better understand the behavior of this approach, we have used a simplified version that mimics the data generation process in terms of a random number of initially labeled FSCs, each of which can divide or differentiate at most once in the course of the experiment. This results in a mixture model that can be analyzed using elementary Markov chain methods and the EM algorithm to estimate division and differentiation probabilities. This is ongoing work with Daniel Kalderon and Léandre Simon (now at EPFL).
10:00 - 10:30 AM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
10:30 - 10:50 AM EDT
Evolution of Menopause: the Mama's Boy Hypothesis
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Yoav Ram, Tel Aviv University
Session Chair
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University
Abstract
Menopause is characterized by a prolonged post-reproductive lifespan as is rare among mammals, with clear evidence only in humans and a few toothed whale species (e.g., killer whales). Previous studies suggest that the evolution of menopause can be explained by kin selection, particulary the “grandmother hypothesis”, which proposes that post-reproductive females increase their inclusive fitness by helping their offspring and grand-offspring. We developed an evolutionary, age- and sex-structured mathematical model to determine wheather a menopause-inducing allele can spread in a non-menopausal population via indirect effects on survival and fecundity of younger kin within the social group. Our model incorporates life-history, social structure, and demography, and we applied it to several species: humans, chimpanzees, baboons, elephants, sperm whales and killer whales. Our results show that menopause is expected to evolve in species where older females continue to live with their adult sons and grandsons and substantial contributions to their survival. We therefore propose an update to the grandmother hypothesis, which we term the “mama’s boy hypothesis”, in which helping philopatric, costly males is the key mechanism driving the evolution of menopause.
11:00 - 11:20 AM EDT
Adaptive dynamics of discriminate and indiscriminate mating
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Ben Allen, Emmanuel College
Session Chair
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University
Abstract
Same-sex sexual behavior (SSB) is observed across many animal taxa. Some instances of SSB likely arise from animals mating indiscriminately without regard to their partner's sex. The effectiveness of indiscriminate mating strategies depends on the costs and benefits of mating and distinguishability of the sexes—which depends in turn on evolvable signals of sex. Other factors like population density (which determines the rate of encountering potential mates) and investment roles (i.e., which sex invests more in reproduction) are thought to affect the evolution of same-sex and different-sex mating, but there is no consensus as to the direction of these effects. We develop a new model of adaptive coevolution of sexual signaling and discrimination, explicitly incorporating encounter rate, mating costs, and investment roles. Coevolutionary dynamics lead to two distinct equilibria: one with no sexual signals and indiscriminate mating; the other with perfect signaling and exclusively different-sex sexual behavior. Low-density conditions favor indiscriminate strategies, due to the steep opportunity costs of missing a possible mate. High density can favor either discriminate or indiscriminate strategies, depending on investment roles. By providing theoretical predictions for the effects of encounter rate and investment roles, our model bridges gaps between theoretical and empirical work on SSB.
11:30 - 11:50 AM EDT
Age, Bias, and Function in Cultural Transmission
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Anne Kandler, Max Planck - Leipzig
Session Chair
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University
Abstract
Cultural variants spread through cultural transmission, which can take many forms. Despite this, neutral models have provided an influential baseline for understanding transmission and innovation. But translating deviations from neutral expectations into specific mechanisms of cultural transmission requires quantitative predictions from models that depart from neutrality in controlled ways. Here, we develop age-structured extensions of neutral theory to explain systematic deviations in baby name distributions across multiple populations. We analyse two complementary perspectives on name diversity: variant abundance distributions (VAD, census data) and progeny distributions (PD, newborn names over time). Standard neutral theory predicts VAD power-law exponents of -1.0, but empirical data show exponents ≈ -1.5 with elevated fractions of both rare and common names. We demonstrate that age-constrained transmission, where only recently transmitted instances can serve as role models, generates this pattern through accumulation of culturally inactive individuals. Combining age constraints with anti-novelty bias, i.e., a preference for established variants, quantitatively reproduces the 1930 US census name distribution. For progeny distributions, we develop an effective neutral theory for thresholded data and show that datasets from eight regions are well-described by this framework after removing rare variants. Comparing fitted innovation rates reveals a new scaling relationship: larger populations exhibit systematically lower per-capita innovation rates. As this relationship is inconsistent with a mutation-like innovation process, which is agnostic to population size, we propose that this pattern reflects functional constraints on name choice. A key function of names is to distinguish individuals. But large populations do not require individuals to distinguish every other person — it is sufficient if distinguishability is ensured at the local scale. We operationalise this expectation as an anti-dominance bias, limiting the spread of any single name within local networks, which is able to replicate the inverse relationship between population size and effective innovation rate. Our results demonstrate how demographic structure, transmission biases, and functional constraints interact to shape diversity patterns.
12:00 - 12:05 PM EDT
Group Photo (Immediately After Talk)
11th Floor Lecture Hall
12:05 - 1:30 PM EDT
Lunch/Free Time
1:30 - 5:00 PM EDT
Open Collaboration
Open Collaboration
2:30 - 3:30 PM EDT
The Society for Modeling and Theory in Population Biology Meeting
Discussion Session - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Noah Rosenberg, Stanford University
Abstract
Optional meeting for participants looking to learn more about the "The Society for Modeling and Theory in Population Biology".
Thursday, June 04, 2026
9:00 - 9:20 AM EDT
Ideas on how genealogies can be used to predict and understand coexistence
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Swati Patel, Oregon State University
Session Chair
Noah Rosenberg, Stanford University
Abstract
A fundamental problem in community ecology is to understand when and how interacting species coexist with one another. Coexistence theory, which has been developed over the last decades, is a framework that focuses on examining species’ invasion growth rates in forward models to elucidate mechanisms that enable coexistence. Alongside this theory, new empirical methods to parameterize forward models have been developed. However, these tend to be labor intensive either requiring long-term time series data sets or complex experimental designs. In many cases, genetic data is more readily obtainable. In this talk, I will explore ideas for using multi-species genealogies, inferred from genetic data and in the framework of the coalescent, to inform coexistence.
9:30 - 9:50 AM EDT
Central place foragers, resource depletion halo's and how the ideal free distribution promotes consumer coexistence
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Claus Rüffler, Uppsala University
Session Chair
Noah Rosenberg, Stanford University
Abstract
During the breeding season, many seabirds congregate in large colonies and act as central place foragers. The “Ashmole’s halo” hypothesis suggests that competition between foraging birds creates an area of reduced prey availability around these colonies, ultimately limiting their size. We developed a model for central place foragers exploiting prey in a two-dimensional environment, where the prey distribution is shaped by intrinsic birth and death, movement, and foraging-induced mortality. This mortality is driven by birds foraging at different distances according to an ideal free distribution that maximizes prey delivery in the presence of flight and search costs. Our results show that prey depletion halos are a robust outcome of these interactions. Furthermore, we show that different seabird species can coexist within a colony due to behavioral segregation. This occurs when interspecific differences creates a trade-off between exploiting scarce prey close to the colony versus more abundant prey farther afield. This mechanism represents a notable example of coexistence under shared (rather than distinct) preferences. We conclude by presenting a study that generalizes these findings to wider ecological contexts.
10:00 - 10:30 AM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
10:30 - 10:50 AM EDT
How do temporal fluctuations affect eco-evolutionary dynamics? Evolutionary rescue and coexistence theory
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Masato Yamamichi, National Institute of Genetics
Session Chair
Noah Rosenberg, Stanford University
Abstract
Rapid contemporary evolution can promote population persistence under environmental stressors and resource competition, but temporal fluctuations may alter these outcomes in complex ways. By integrating plankton experiments with mathematical modeling, we demonstrate how temporal fluctuations in environmental stressors and resource availability shape ecological outcomes through rapid adaptation. First, algal experiments revealed that large environmental fluctuations had a dual effect: they initially caused an adaptation lag, but ultimately enhanced evolutionary rescue. Our mathematical model further suggests that environmental fluctuations can promote rescue by increasing trait variance (Shibasaki & Yamamichi 2026 Evolution). Second, we showed that high genetic variance in prey defense generated predator-prey population cycles, thereby promoting fluctuation-dependent predator coexistence. Using the framework of modern coexistence theory, we demonstrate that these cycles facilitate coexistence by increasing niche differences through temporally varying resource availability (Yamamichi 2026 Biol. Lett.). Together, these findings demonstrate that environmental and resource fluctuations, rather than being mere noise, can act as key drivers that paradoxically facilitate both evolutionary rescue and multispecies coexistence.
11:00 - 11:20 AM EDT
Spatial Trophic Dynamics Shape and are Shaped by Desertification Transitions
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Koustav Halder, Rutgers University
Session Chair
Noah Rosenberg, Stanford University
Abstract
Drylands, which sustain billions of people, face desertification driven by climate change and grazing pressures. From the bottom up, desertification is affected by water availability, with vegetation often self-organising into spatial patterns that vary with aridity levels. From the top down, overgrazing is known to drive desertification independently of groundwater availability. How these distinctive forces interact, i.e. how vegetation patterns and ultimately, desertification transitions, shape and are shaped by the spatial dynamics of higher trophic levels, remains an open question. Here, we introduce a spatially explicit tri–trophic model that links vegetation pattern formation to consumer–resource interactions and foraging behaviour. We find that the nature of vegetation spatial distribution and desertification transition strongly influence consumer spatial organisation, movement, and synchrony. Vegetation organised regularly in space generates “boom—bust” synchronised metapopulations, whereas fractal vegetation organisation generates scale-free consumer clustering and low synchrony. Our results reveal a reciprocal coupling between spatial trophic dynamics and ecosystem resilience, underscoring the need to integrate trophic interactions and behaviour into predictions informing management strategies for dryland ecosystems.
11:30 - 11:50 AM EDT
Label invariance: a guiding principle for ecological models
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Chuliang Song, UCLA
Session Chair
Noah Rosenberg, Stanford University
Abstract
Ecological models, though diverse in form, are strengthened when they obey guiding principles. We formalize and advocate for a foundational principle we call “label invariance”, which says that a model’s dynamics must remain the same when identical individuals are arbitrarily grouped into distinct sub-populations. This principle is a necessary consequence of trait continuity—the observation that ecological interactions change continuously as organisms become more similar. Violation of label invariance often implies a hidden, intrinsic niche differentiation between species, which may obscure the mechanisms of biodiversity maintenance. We provide a general framework for constructing both deterministic and stochastic models that follow label invariance. We further demonstrate its utility as a complementary, non-statistical tool for empirical model selection. In sum, label invariance provides an important test for evaluating existing ecological models and a guide for developing new ones, promoting clarity in model assumptions from the outset.
12:00 - 1:30 PM EDT
Lunch/Free Time
1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT
Parallel models and statistics across ecology and evolution
Problem Session - 11th Floor Collaborative Space
Moderator
Maike Morrison, Santa Fe Institute
1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT
Can we narrow the gap between theory and practice in conservation biology?
Problem Session - 10th Floor Classroom
Moderator
Gili Greenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2:30 - 3:30 PM EDT
AI in theory
Panel Discussion - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Panelist
Erol Akçay, University of Pennsylvania
Panelist
Sohini Ramachandran, Brown University
Panelist
Simon Tavaré, Columbia University
Panelist
Jeremy Van Cleve, University of Kentucky
Moderator
Julia Palacios, Stanford University
3:30 - 4:00 PM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
4:00 - 4:15 PM EDT
Exploring interacting effects of resource competition and infectious disease on plant population growth
Contributed Talks - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Margaret Simon, University of Kansas
Session Chair
Mark Broom, City St. George's, University of London
Abstract
In this work, we confront the challenge of incorporating multiple ecological interaction types, the strengths of which can change over space and time, into a plant population model. We use an Individual-based modeling (IBM) approach to explore feedbacks between plant size and growth as modulated through effects on, and responses to, resource competition and infectious disease. The IBM holds plant positions constant, but allows for plant growth and pathogen spread. As plants grow larger, they begin to overlap in resource space, resulting in greater strengths of resource competition. Further, under biomass-dependent infectious disease transmission, the larger a plant becomes, the more biomass there is for the pathogen to colonize and exploit, which, in turn, slows plant growth. On the other hand, larger plants may have more resources (or, size may correlate with age, and older plants tend to have a more experienced immune response) that can help them defend against infection, thus reducing negative impacts on growth. This work aims to disentangle the interacting effects of two main drivers of population and biomass dynamics in infectious plant disease systems.
4:15 - 4:30 PM EDT
Evolution of Cooperation under Structured Social Contexts and Information Asymmetry
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Jiayu Li, Princeton University
Session Chair
Mark Broom, City St. George's, University of London
Abstract
We live in a world that is becoming increasingly compartmentalized. People often behave differently in different social contexts, and information about someone’s behavior in one context may not be accessible in another. This raises fundamental questions about how context-dependent behavior shapes reputations and how those reputations guide others’ behavior. In particular, how reputations facilitate cooperation in structured environments spanning multiple social contexts is poorly understood. Here we present a novel framework to study how the interplay between population structure and information asymmetry affects reputation-based cooperation. We consider a population in which a subgroup of individuals belongs to a “club”. Club members can interact and observe interactions both inside and outside the club, while non-members can do so only outside the club; club members therefore have an extra bit of information when assessing the reputations of other club members. Our analysis has shown that, if individuals hold private views about each other’s reputation, then a sufficiently large club consisting of cooperative individuals who only punish those who behave consistently badly can promote cooperation. Moreover, if individuals agree about each other’s reputation (i.e., reputations are public information), then cooperation is stable. This framework has the potential to advance our understanding of the evolution of multi-context social environment, including the origin of institutions.
4:30 - 4:45 PM EDT
Beyond Storage Effects and Overdominance: Spatial Granularity Promotes Balanced Polymorphism in Changing Environments
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Davorka Gulisija, University of New Mexico
Session Chair
Mark Broom, City St. George's, University of London
Abstract
Genetic polymorphism plays a crucial role in adaptation to changing environments, yet the mechanisms that maintain polymorphism under temporally varying selection across loci remain poorly explored. Previous theoretical models have typically assumed synchronous selection across loci or space, whereas natural conditions often impose mismatches in the timing of selection among loci or across spatial locations. Here, we examine how spatial mismatches in the onset of selection, or even stochastic perturbations in its magnitude, influence the maintenance of genetic polymorphism. Using computational simulations of a one- and two-locus Wright–Fisher model in two demes, with and without conditions that favor the maintenance of variation, we introduce phase shifts and random perturbations in selection between loci and demes and evaluate their effects on polymorphism persistence across different regimes of selection and migration rates. Our results show that spatial granularity in selection modulates heterozygosity and can increase genetic diversity relative to synchronous selection. These findings provide new insights into the evolutionary dynamics that sustain genetic polymorphism in changing environments.
4:45 - 5:00 PM EDT
Community assembly in structured ecological models
Contributed Talk - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Zachary Miller, Yale University
Session Chair
Mark Broom, City St. George's, University of London
Abstract
Large, complex ecological communities assemble and persist almost everywhere on Earth, despite strong competition for nutrients and space. Borrowing tools and ideas from statistical physics, ecologists have made progress understanding this community assembly process in “disordered” models with random parameters. However, interactions in natural communities are highly ordered by trait trade-offs, trophic hierarchies, evolutionary relationships, and other structure. I will discuss recent progress on community assembly in models that incorporate both structure and randomness. As an illustrative example, I will highlight an approximation theory for the classic competition-colonization trade-off model in ecology. This theory predicts the distributions of species richness, species’ abundances, trait correlations and other properties of communities assembled from a random species pool. Most notably, about half of the species in a large pool typically coexist, with no saturation in the pool size and weak dependence on the underlying trait distribution -- suggesting that trade-offs can help explain the robust assembly of large ecological communities. Additionally, I will show that large self-assembled communities have some surprising emergent properties that challenge classical conceptions of ecological coexistence but mirror recent findings in experimental microbial communities.
Friday, June 05, 2026
9:00 - 9:20 AM EDT
Plasmid mutation rates scale with copy number
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Adrian Gonzalez Casanova, Arizona State University
Session Chair
John Wakeley, Harvard University
Abstract
Plasmids are extra-chromosomal genetic elements that play a key role in bacterial adaptation and in the spread of antibiotic resistance. Unlike chromosomal genes, plasmids are present in multiple copies per cell and are transmitted through both vertical and horizontal inheritance. This creates evolutionary dynamics that differ fundamentally from classical population genetics, as mutation, selection, and genetic drift interact across two levels: within cells and between cells. In this talk, I introduce stochastic population genetics models that capture the interplay between plasmid copy number, mutational supply, and segregational drift. Our results show that plasmid evolution accelerates with copy number despite the increased drift induced by random segregation, and that plasmid copy number emerges as an evolutionarily optimized trait balancing selective benefit and metabolic cost. These findings illustrate how multilevel stochasticity shapes evolutionary rates and provides a probabilistic (partial) explanation for the rapid emergence of antibiotic resistance. Based on the papers Ramiro-Martínez, P. et al (2026). Plasmid mutation rates scale with copy number. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 123(4). and Hernandez-Beltran, J. C. R., Miró Pina, V., Siri-Jégousse, A., Palau, S., Peña-Miller, R., & González Casanova, A. (2022). Segregational instability of multicopy plasmids: A population genetics approach. Ecology and Evolution, 12, e9469. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9469
9:30 - 9:50 AM EDT
Evolution of species' range and niche in changing environments
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Jitka Polechova, University of Vienna
Session Chair
John Wakeley, Harvard University
Abstract
What causes species' niche and range margins to shift is not only a fundamental theoretical question, but also directly affects how we assess the resilience of natural populations in current and future environments. Yet despite the urgent need for theory that can predict evolutionary and ecological responses in times of accelerated climate change, the assumptions of current eco-evolutionary theory remain restrictive, with predictions neglecting important interactions between ecological and evolutionary forces. In this study, I provide quantitative, testable predictions on limits to adaptation in changing environments, which arise from the feedback between selection, genetic drift, and population dynamics. This eco-evolutionary feedback creates a tipping point beyond which adaptation fails as genetic drift overwhelms selection, and species' ranges contract from the margins or fragment abruptly - even under gradual environmental change. This ''expansion threshold'' is determined by three parameters: two quantifying the effects of spatial and temporal variability on the fitness of the population, and one capturing the impact of genetic drift: the reduction of local genetic diversity across generations in finite populations. Genetic drift is strong in populations with small ''neighbourhood size''. Increasing dispersal, such as via assisted migration, enlarges neighbourhood size, counteracting the loss of genetic variation due to genetic drift. This increases adaptive potential and can facilitate evolutionary rescue in changing environments. Conversely, beyond the expansion threshold, local genetic variance becomes depleted, increasing extinction probability. The theory provides general predictions for species' range and niche dynamics beyond standard ecological niche models, highlighting the fundamental impact of eco-evolutionary interactions. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2604510123
10:00 - 10:30 AM EDT
Coffee Break
11th Floor Collaborative Space
10:30 - 10:50 AM EDT
Coalescent point processes
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Julia Palacios, Stanford University
Session Chair
John Wakeley, Harvard University
Abstract
The coalescent is a central modeling framework in modern population genetics and evolutionary biology. Coalescent models provide robust approximations to the distribution of sampled genealogies under a variety of population dynamics and allow us to express genealogical tree priors in terms of population parameters of interest. Point process constructions of these models have proven to be an exceptionally fruitful mathematical approach. In this talk, I will present three new instances in which point processes constructions facilitate the derivation of novel coalescent priors and simulation. In particular, we derive the coalescent distribution under epidemiological disease dynamics with latent periods, under linear birth-death dynamics and when the TMRCA is bounded (bounded coalescent).
11:00 - 11:20 AM EDT
Seed dormancy shapes gene drive dynamics in plants
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Jaehee Kim, Cornell University
Session Chair
John Wakeley, Harvard University
Abstract
Seed dormancy is a defining life-history trait of many plant populations. We develop the comprehensive modeling framework for gene drives in plant populations that incorporates a persistent soil seedbank. We show how the presence of a seedbank can significantly slow gene drive spread but also reduce the genetic load required to achieve population elimination. Furthermore, we show that seedbanks substantially increase the required introduction frequency of threshold-dependent gene drives, which could prevent establishment in some cases, yet also provide an intrinsic biosafety mechanism for confining a highly efficient drive to a target population. Our study highlights the need to incorporate seedbank dynamics into gene drive strategies to ensure realistic predictions and successful field applications.
11:30 - 11:50 AM EDT
Population genetics of source-sink dynamics
11th Floor Lecture Hall
Speaker
Phillip Messer, Cornell University
Session Chair
John Wakeley, Harvard University
Abstract
Organisms typically inhabit environments that are not entirely homogeneous, owing to local variation in habitat quality or environmental conditions. Some regions of a population can then consistently produce more offspring than others, resulting in a net flux of individuals from these regions into less productive parts of the population. However, the potential impacts of such source-sink dynamics are rarely incorporated into population genetic models. Here we show that even a small source with a modest net outflux into an otherwise large, stable population can dramatically reduce coalescence times and overall levels of genetic diversity. By contrast, variance and inbreeding effective population sizes may remain close to the census size. When demographic inference methods are applied to such populations, the inferred history often resembles a strong recent population expansion. Nonetheless, source-sink dynamics leave distinctive signatures of tree imbalance in coalescent genealogies that allow us to distinguish them from true population expansions. We further extend these analyses to scenarios involving multiple sources and to nonstationary settings in which sources emerge only transiently. Our results provide a potentially widespread mechanism for confounding demographic inference and reducing a species’ effective population size without requiring selection, high reproductive variance, or changes in census size over time.
Modeling & Theory in Population Biology at the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology
Our latest conference was June 2nd - 6th 2025 at the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology in Chicago.
More details can be found on the NITMB website. The full schedule is below.
Photos from NITMB and Jennifer Foot.
|
Monday, June 2 |
|
|---|---|
| 8:30 am - 8:55 am | Light breakfast |
| 8:55 am - 9:00 am | Welcome, Introduction of the Institute & Housekeeping – NITMB Leadership |
| 9:00 am - 09:10 am |
Workshop Introduction - Joanna Masel |
| 9:10 am - 9:20 am | Noah Rosenberg - SMTPB information |
| 9:20 am - 9:40 am | Nick Barton - Modelling complex traits |
| 9:40 am - 10:00 am | Dandan Peng - Population Genetics Simulations on Phylogenetic Trees: Investigating the Relationship Between Micro and Macro Evolution |
| 10:00 am - 10:20 am | Jason Bertram - Strong amplification of quantitative genetic variation under a balance between mutation and fluctuating stabilizing selection |
| 10:20 am - 10:50 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:50 am - 11:10 am | Junjian (Janis) Liu - Error rates in QST-FST comparisons depend on genetic architecture and estimation procedure |
| 11:10 am - 11:30 am | Walid Mawass - Residual confounding bias due to imperfect population stratification control |
| 11:30 am - 11:50 am | Mariadaria Ianni-Ravn - Understanding the Impacts of Multi-Generational Environment Sharing on Phenotypic Covariance |
| 11:50 am - 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: 1. Rate-dependent phenomena in ecology and evolution |
| 2:15 pm - 2:45 pm | Coffee Break |
| 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: 2. An Introduction to Branching Processes and Generating Functions 3. Causal Inference in Population Biology 4. Which parts of population genetic theory need to be rethought in light of realistically high genome-wide deleterious mutation rates in species like humans? 5. Imagining the next generation of social evolution theory 6. SMTPB: Strategies for advocating for modeling to non-theorists 7. Matrix population models and linkages to population genetics, quantitative models, and evolutionary theory. 8. Theory to Control, Mitigate, and Anticipate Infectious Disease Impact |
| 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm | Poster session and drinks |
| Tuesday, June 3 |
|
|---|---|
| 8:30 am - 8:55 am | Light breakfast |
| 8:55 am - 9:00 am | Welcome & Housekeeping |
| 9:00 am - 09:30 am |
Anuraag Bukkuri - Williamson Prize talk: Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics as an Engine for Cancer Treatment and Drug Discovery |
| 9:30 am - 9:50 am | Motasem ElGamel - Population dynamics and universal statistics of tumor-inhabiting bacteria |
| 9:50 am - 10:10 am | Nicola Mulberry - Can we build lineage trees from single-cell level gene expression data? |
| 10:10 am - 10:30 am | Murat Tugrul - Noise in Cellular Damage Accumulation: Consequences for Ageing and Population Fitness |
| 10:30 am - 11:00 am | Coffee Break |
| 11:00 am - 11:20 am | Aaron King - Markov genealogy processes: a new mathematical basis for phylodynamics |
| 11:20 am - 11:40 am | Gili Greenbaum - Ecology and evolution in gene drive modeling |
| 11:40 am - 12:00 pm | Hildegard Uecker - Modeling evolutionary rescue: Concepts and applications to bacterial evolution |
| 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: 1. Mathematics and Bureaucracy2. SMTPB: Undergraduate teaching on modeling & theory 3. Modeling polygenic inheritance with loci of different effect sizes 4. New opportunities in phylodynamics 5. What is an environment? Phenotypes and fitness mapping across environmental scales in the era of cheap fitness measurements 6. Statistics for diversity measurement across population biology 7. Incorporating ecology and evolution into models 8. Establishment probabilities of beneficial alleles when the branching process assumption fails |
| 2:15 pm - 2:45 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: Coffee Break |
| 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: 1. Mathematics and Bureaucracy2. SMTPB: Undergraduate teaching on modeling & theory 3. Modeling polygenic inheritance with loci of different effect sizes 4. New opportunities in phylodynamics 5. What is an environment? Phenotypes and fitness mapping across environmental scales in the era of cheap fitness measurements 6. Statistics for diversity measurement across population biology 7. Incorporating ecology and evolution into models 8. Establishment probabilities of beneficial alleles when the branching process assumption fails |
| 4:15 pm - 6:00 pm |
Poster session and drinks |
|
Wednesday, June 4 |
|
|---|---|
|
8:30 am - 8:55 am |
Light breakfast |
| 8:55 am - 9:00 am | Welcome & Housekeeping |
| 9:00 am - 09:20 am |
Talia Borofsky - Cooperative hunting and competition for prey shape group formation |
| 9:20 am - 9:40 am | Lilach Hadany - The evolution of cooperation under host-microbiome interactions |
| 9:40 am - 10:00 am | Daniel Priego Espinosa - The effect of background selection on the evolution of altruism in metapopulations |
| 10:00 am - 10:20 am | Farshad Shirani - Evolution of a Species' Range |
| 10:20 am - 10:50 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:50 am - 11:00 am | Sebastian Schreiber - Priority effects in community assembly: Mathematical rigor meets empirical realism |
| 11:10 am - 11:30 am | Zhijie Feng - A linear response theory of ecological invasion |
| 11:30 am - 11:50 am | Fernanda Valdovinos - A bioenergetic framework for aboveground terrestrial food webs |
| 11:50 am - 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: 1. SMTPB: Online events & future meetings2. Enhancing Communication and Understanding of Theoretical Models in Population Biology through Dynamic Visualizations 3. Accounting for unequal variance in mixed-ploidy population genetics 4. Modeling the evolution of recombination landscapes 5. Multiplicative noise in ecological dynamics 6. The informativeness of alleles for mixed-membership cluster assignment 7. Adaptation in spatially and temporally varying environments 8. Scale-independent, rank-statistic based definition of epistasis |
| 2:15 pm - 2:45 pm | Coffee Break |
| 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: generated from sticky note board |
| 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm |
Excursion - river boat architecture cruise |
|
|
|
|---|---|
| 8:30 am - 8:55 am | Light breakfast |
| 8:55 am - 9:00 am | Welcome & Housekeeping |
| 9:00 am - 09:20 am |
John Wakeley - Coalescent processes conditional on the population pedigree when there is selfing |
| 9:20 am - 9:40 am | Diego Veliz-Otani - Genetic Relationship Matrices calculated from whole-genome sequence data can capture evolutionary relationships at all time scales |
| 9:40 am - 10:00 am |
Daniel Weissman - The time to the most recent genetic common ancestor |
| 10:00 am - 10:20 am | Hao Shen - Efficient computation of expected pairwise coalescent times in the structured coalescent |
| 10:20 am - 10:50 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:50 am - 11:10 am | Lily Tamir - Combinatorics of time-consistent galled trees |
| 11:10 am - 11:30 am | Jaehee Kim - Population genetics of dormancy |
| 11:30 am - 11:50 am | John McEnany - Rapid evolution in a fluctuating environment |
| 11:50 am - 1:00 pm | Lunch |
| 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm | Parallel Discussion Sessions: generated from sticky note board |
| 2:30 pm - 3:00 pm | Coffee Break |
| 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm |
Parallel Discussion Sessions: generated from sticky note board |
| 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm |
Reception with drinks and appetizers (in-suite) |
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|
|
|---|---|
| 8:30 am - 8:55 am | Light breakfast |
| 8:55 am - 9:00 am | Welcome & Housekeeping |
| 9:00 am - 09:20 am |
Anastasia (Nastia) Lyulina - The site-frequency spectrum under selection and time-varying demography |
| 9:20 am - 9:40 am | Jiawei Liu - MultiSEED: a Theoretical Framework to Predict the Long-term Strain Diversity |
| 9:40 am - 10:00 am |
Puneeth Deraje - The Brownian bridge and its extensions: Applications to spatial inference, phylogenetics and population genetics |
| 10:00 am - 10:20 am | Florian Labourel - Beta-binomial distributions and the population genetics view of systems biology |
| 10:20 am - 10:50 am | Coffee Break |
| 10:50 am - 11:10 am | Jhelam Nitin Deshpande - Pleiotropic trajectories of evolution when there is global epistasis |
| 11:10 am - 11:30 am | Claire Godineau - How Inbreeding Depression in Growth Shapes Competition and Fitness: Insights from a New Ecological Model |
| 11:30 am - 11:50 am | Bret Payseur - Elevated mutation near crossovers inhibits the evolution of recombination |
| 11:50 am - 12:00 pm | Noah Rosenberg - Talk and poster prize announcements |
| 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm | Lunch |
Modeling & Theory in Population Biology at the Banff International Research Station
May 20, 2024 - May 24, 2024
The society hosted a hybrid research meeting with a small in-person component at the Banff International Research Station. A summary of the event by participants Gili Greenbaum and Oana Carja has been published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution and can be read here.
The full report of the meeting can be read on the BIRS website here.
Photo from BIRS.
Schedule:
| Monday, May 20 | |
|---|---|
| 07:00 - 08:45 | Breakfast ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 08:45 - 09:00 | Introduction and Welcome by BIRS Staff ↓ (TCPL 201) |
| 09:00 - 09:45 | Noah Rosenberg: Introduction to the meeting; participant introductions (in-person participants) (TCPL 201) |
| 09:45 - 10:10 | Ailene MacPherson: A call for Bayesian inference in local adaptation: what we can and can not learn from reciprocal transplant data [SESSION TITLE: SPATIAL MODELS] (TCPL 201) |
| 10:10 - 10:40 | Coffee Break (TCPL Foyer) |
| 10:40 - 11:05 | Daniel Weissman: Challenges for selective sweep inference in spatially structured populations (TCPL 201) |
| 11:05 - 11:30 | Oana Carja: Topological puzzles in biology: how structure shapes a system's evolution (TCPL 201) |
| 11:30 - 13:00 | Lunch ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 13:00 - 13:25 | Mark Broom: Biological modelling: some average research [SESSION TITLE: POPULATION MODELS, GENERAL PRINCIPLES] (TCPL 201) |
| 13:25 - 13:50 | Brandon Ogbunu: On biological laws (TCPL 201) |
| 13:50 - 14:10 | Group Photo ↓ (TCPL Foyer) |
| 14:10 - 14:35 | Caroline Colijn: A theory, not just a theory, or not even a theory? Strengths and pitfalls of quantitative modelling (TCPL 201) |
| 14:35 - 15:00 | Hamish Spencer: Flavors of history in population modelling (TCPL 201) |
| 15:00 - 15:30 | Coffee Break (TCPL Foyer) |
| 15:30 - 16:00 | SMTPB large-group discussion (TCPL 201) |
| 16:00 - 17:30 | SMTPB workgroups (in-person participants) (TCPL Foyer) |
| 17:30 - 19:30 | Dinner ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| Tuesday, May 21 | |
|---|---|
| 07:00 - 08:45 | Breakfast ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 09:00 - 09:25 | Marcy Uyenoyama: Effect of genetic diversity on FST and LD (TCPL 201) |
| 09:25 - 09:50 | Emilia Huerta-Sanchez: Detecting introgression from multiple archaic populations (TCPL 201) |
| 09:50 - 10:15 | Matthew Osmond: Locating genetic ancestors with ancestral recombination graphs (TCPL 201) |
| 10:35 - 11:20 | Coffee Break (online coffee break together with CIRM) (TCPL Foyer) |
| 11:10 - 11:35 | Jeremy Van Cleve: Too big to (not) fail: scale, size, & critical transitions in social groups (TCPL 201) |
| 11:45 - 13:00 | Lunch ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 13:00 - 13:25 | Sasha Dall: The evolutionary consequences of learning under competition [SESSION TITLE: COMPETITION, COOPERATION & CONFLICT] (TCPL 201) |
| 13:25 - 13:45 | Egor Lappo: Cultural evolution modeling of move choice in chess (TCPL 201) |
| 13:45 - 14:10 | Joanna Masel: Fitness: how to get rid of it (TCPL 201) |
| 14:10 - 14:30 | Daniel Smith: A unified framework for interference and exploitative competition: synthesizing classic ecological and evolutionary game theory models (TCPL 201) |
| 14:30 - 14:55 | Benjamin Allen: Nonlinear social evolution and the emergence of collective action (TCPL 201) |
| 15:00 - 15:30 | Coffee Break (TCPL Foyer) |
| 15:55 - 16:45 | SMTPB large-group discussion (in-person participants) (TCPL 201) |
| 16:45 - 17:30 | SMTPB workgroups (in-person participants) (TCPL Foyer) |
| 17:30 - 19:30 | Dinner ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| Wednesday, May 22 | |
|---|---|
| 07:00 - 08:45 | Breakfast ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 09:00 - 09:25 | Julia Palacios: Distance-based modeling and inference in phylogenetics [SESSION TITLE: PHYLOGENY, TREES, AND MACROEVOLUTION] (TCPL 201) |
| 09:25 - 09:50 | Noah Rosenberg: Enumeration in mathematical phylogenetics: we are not afraid (TCPL 201) |
| 09:50 - 10:10 | Chloe Shiff: Enumeration of rooted binary perfect phylogenies (TCPL 201) |
| 10:10 - 10:30 | Coffee Break (TCPL Foyer) |
| 10:30 - 10:55 | Lindi Wahl: Are high rates of bacterial extinction over geological time scales due to phage evolution? (TCPL 201) |
| 10:55 - 11:20 | Carolin Kosiol: PoMo via RevBayes: inferring phylogenies, disentangling GC-bias and balancing selection (TCPL 201) |
| 11:20 - 11:45 | Benjamin Peter: Interpreting principal components analysis (TCPL 201) |
| 11:45 - 13:00 | Lunch ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 13:30 - 17:30 | Free Afternoon (Banff National Park) |
| 17:30 - 19:30 | Dinner ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| Thursday, May 23 | |
|---|---|
| 07:00 - 08:45 | Breakfast ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 09:00 - 09:25 | Troy Day: Modeling the distribution of fitness effects of new mutations [SESSION TITLE: SELECTION AND ADAPTATION] (TCPL 201) |
| 09:25 - 09:50 | Yoav Ram: Fast adaption can be an evolutionary diversion (TCPL 201) |
| 09:50 - 10:10 | Puneeth Deraje: The role of epigenetics in evolutionary rescue (TCPL 201) |
| 10:10 - 10:30 | Coffee Break (TCPL Foyer) |
| 10:30 - 10:55 | Andrew Clark: Modeling piRNA defense against transposable elements (Online) |
| 10:55 - 11:20 | Carl Bergstrom: The cost of acquiring information by natural selection (TCPL 201) |
| 11:20 - 11:45 | Daniel Weinreich: Modifier Theory: The Population Genetics of Phenotypic Noise (TCPL 201) |
| 11:45 - 13:00 | Lunch ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 13:10 - 13:35 | Gili Greenbaum: Eco-evolutionary modeling of gene drives [SESSION TITLE: ECOLOGY/EVOLUTION INTERFACE] (TCPL 201) |
| 13:35 - 13:55 | Maike Morrison: Quantifying the stability of microbiomes and the timescale of antibiotic perturbation (TCPL 201) |
| 13:55 - 14:20 | Viggo Andreasen: The effect of susceptible depletion on fitness and natural selection during the covid-pandemic (TCPL 201) |
| 14:20 - 14:45 | Rohan Mehta: Eco-evolutionary dynamics of costly antipredator behavior: autotomy and offspring burden (TCPL 201) |
| 14:45 - 15:10 | Bryn Wiley: On the fast track: hybrids adapt more rapidly than parental populations in a novel environment (TCPL 201) |
| 14:55 - 15:30 | Coffee Break (TCPL Foyer) |
| 15:40 - 16:05 | Mark Tanaka: Why is facultative parthenogenesis uncommon? [SESSION TITLE: MODES OF REPRODUCTION] (TCPL 201) |
| 16:05 - 16:30 | Sally Otto: Evolution when selection occurs in both haploid and diploid phases (TCPL 201) |
| 16:20 - 16:55 | SMTPB workgroups (in-person participants) (TCPL Foyer) |
| 16:55 - 17:30 | SMTPB large-group discussion (in-person participants) (TCPL 201) |
| 17:30 - 19:30 | Dinner ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| Friday, May 24 | |
|---|---|
| 07:00 - 08:45 | Breakfast ↓ (Vistas Dining Room) |
| 09:00 - 09:20 | Amy Forsythe: A small change can make a big difference: capturing vital rate heterogeneity in Leslie matrices [SESSION TITLE: DEMOGRAPHY AND STAGE STRUCTURE] (TCPL 201) |
| 09:20 - 09:45 | Maria Orive: Evolutionary rescue and spatial adaptation under sexual and asexual reproduction: combining stage-structured models and quantitative phenotypes (TCPL 201) |
| 09:45 - 10:10 | Ulrich Steiner: Scaling stochastic molecular dynamics to demographic change in structured populations (TCPL 201) |
| 10:10 - 10:30 | Coffee Break (TCPL Foyer) |
| 10:30 - 11:00 | Checkout by 11AM ↓ (Front Desk - Professional Development Centre) |
| 10:30 - 10:55 | Oren Kolodny: Modeling cultural and demographic interactions among prehistoric populations [SESSION TITLE: CULTURAL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION] (TCPL 201) |
| 10:55 - 11:15 | Kaleda Denton: Modelling Constant and Stochastically Variable Conformity (TCPL 201) |
| 11:15 - 11:40 | Nicole Creanza: Theoretical approaches to understanding cultural change in birds and humans (TCPL 201) |
| 11:40 - 13:30 | Lunch from 11:30 to 13:30 (Vistas Dining Room) |