Computational Biology Group - Modelling Tropical Rainforests

This is a collaborative project with Dr Nick Brown in Plant Sciences and Professor Philip Maini, looking at the likely mechanisms driving species diversity. The project started as a very successful MSc dissertation and has continued into a joint DPhil project.

We are interested in formulating mathematical models based on the mechanisms observed in the rain forest. In particular our study is focused on the tropical rain forests of South-East Asia. South-East Asian forests exhibit special features not seen in other parts of the world, such as mast fruiting events. During a mast event all species of trees will flower gregariously at the same time. These tree species do not flower annually, but after a random interval. The timing of the events is related to the El-Niņo South Oscillation. Competition-colonisation models - coupled systems of non-linear ordinary differential equations (ODEs), are used to describe the time evolution of the population density of different tree species interacting in a variety of ways. The conclusions of this work were that within this model framework, inclusion of random fruiting events necessary to successfully predict species coexistence and mimic correctly the field observations of rain forest tree dynamics.

More details

People involved

• David Gavaghan
• Caroline Bampfylde
• Philip Maini
• Nick Brown

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