Featured Speaker :  Lucas Medeiros (Structural Ecology Group, MIT)

Title :  Ecological community dynamics as a biased dice

Abstract : 

Despite the rich biodiversity found in nature, it is unclear if or how certain ecological communities can coexist.  Yet, solving this problem is important in order to understand the role of randomness and predictability in ecology.  In this study, we estimate the probability of observing a given ecological community under changing environments.  We validate our theoretical results using a 10-year observational study recording 88 plant-herbivore communities.