Overview
More information: https://www.nitmb.org/nitmb-seminar-series
Title: Redefining Fitness: Evolution as a Dynamic Learning Process
Abstract:
Evolution is the process of optimal adaptation of biological populations to their living environments. This is expressed via the concept of fitness, defined as relative reproductive success. However, it has been pointed out that this procedure is incomplete and logically circular. To address this issue, several authors have called for new ways to re-define fitness through the relationship between phenotypes and their environment, but a general approach has remained elusive. In this talk, I show that fitness, defined as the likelihood function that follows from mapping population dynamics to Bayesian learning, provides a principled solution to this problem. I will show how probabilistic models of fitness can easily be constructed in this way, and how their averages acquire meaning as information. I will also show how this approach leads to powerful tools to analyze problems of evolution in stochastic environments, game theory, and selection in group-structured populations.
Luis Bettencourt is a Professor of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago. He is also the Inaugural Director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Bettencourt’s research investigates fundamental processes of biological and social organization and evolution in complex systems, with an emphasis on urban environments. He creates multidisciplinary theory and methods to deal with integrated concepts in these complex systems, often based on network structures and processes of learning and adaptation.
The NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology Seminar Series aims to bring together a mix of mathematicians and biologists to foster discussion and collaboration between the two fields. The seminar series will take place on Fridays from 10am – 11am at the NITMB offices in the John Hancock Center in downtown Chicago. There will be both an in-person and virtual component.