GELIFES Seminars - Ben Martin

Link to seminar

Ben Martin (UvA)

Rules of Life and Death

Toward a mechanistic understanding of predator–prey interactionse

Predation is among the most fundamental processes that shape ecological and evolutionary dynamics, yet our understanding of the mechanics of how predation works is surprisingly limited. What determines whether prey successfully evade predators or are captured? Which traits of predators and prey matter most? And how do both parties transform dynamic streams of sensory inputs into behavioral decisions?

In this talk, I will present work combining theory, laboratory experiments, and field observations to develop a general mechanistic theory of predator–prey interactions. While animal behavior is often viewed as highly complex and idiosyncratic, the behavior of predators and prey during these critical ecological interactions can be predicted with high fidelity by simple mathematical models. This finding holds great promise for advancing a general theory of predator–prey interactions, capable of predicting who eats whom—and at what rates—across a broad range of ecological systems.

Biosketch:
Our group integrates theoretical and data-driven approaches to uncover the rules governing how animals interact with each other and their environments—and to understand the ecological consequences of these rules. Our work is organized into two main research lines: computational behavior and computational physiology.

• Computational Behavior: We use experiments and field measurements to reverse-engineer the behavioral rules that underlie ecological interactions, and use mathematical models to explore how these rules shape ecological dynamics.
• Computational Physiology: We develop a mechanistic understanding of processes at the interface of physics and physiology to predict how animals respond to their environments. Current research themes include creating and testing general models of organismal energetics and identifying the mechanistic underpinnings of thermal tolerance.