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The Science Seminar Series: March 5, 2009
A Time Scale Model for Interacting Wild and Transgenic Mosquito Populations
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Dr. Billy Jackson
Department of Math and Computer Science
Valdosta State University
Place: Powell Hall
Time: 4:00 -5:00pm
Abstract:
Biologists discovered the genetic code for the mosquito in 2002. This discovery has led to investigating the possibility of altering or removing specific genes in order to hinder the population’s ability to transmit diseases to humans. The question of effectiveness of such a strategy has been posed to the mathematics community. In particular, we want to know if it is possible to introduce genetically altered mosquitoes into a wild population and have the emerging heterogeneous offspring (which would be unable to transmit the diseases as well) dominate in the population. Such questions deal with population dynamics, and there have been several recent papers by some mathematicians dealing with this issue. However, the models have been based on continuous and discrete domains. Mosquito populations are notorious for their duality in nature: they tend to exhibit continuous growth at times and discrete growth at other times. Thus, I will propose a model which is hybrid in nature to examine the dynamics using a new area of mathematics called time scales analysis.
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