SCIENCE AT THE EDGE SEMINAR Friday, February 23 at 11:30am Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg. Refreshments at 11:15 Speaker: Claudia Neuhauser Professor and Head of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN Title: Understanding Ecological Communities through Spatial Models Abstract: Mathematical modeling in ecology has played an important role in elucidating consequences of complex interactions of species in ecological communities. While much of ecological modeling relies on deterministic and non-spatial modeling frameworks, increasingly a spatial component is explicitly included. This talk will focus on how spatial models have contributed to our understanding of complex interactions in ecological communities and will point to future directions towards integrating data and computation in ecology.