Cooperation and conflict: from robots to microbial communities
Event details
Date | 12.02.2019 |
Hour | 14:00 |
Speaker | Prof. Sara Mitri, Département de Microbiologie Fondamentale, Université de Lausanne |
Location | |
Category | Conferences - Seminars |
In its most intuitive form, natural selection predicts the survival of the fittest - competition and conflict between individual organisms. But cooperation is widespread in nature, from microbes to humans. I am interested in understanding the emergence and stability of cooperation and competition, and when each is predicted to arise. I will start by briefly presenting work from my PhD where we used robots to study the evolution of communication. I will then switch model systems and talk about interactions in single species of bacteria, then multi-species bacterial communities.
Here, I will focus in more detail on our latest research using theory and experiments to study a four-species bacterial ecosystem capable of degrading liquid pollutants. We show that positive interactions that resemble cooperation are highly environment-dependent. I will then finish with an overview of ongoing projects in my group.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- Prof. Paolo De Los Rios, Laboratory of Statistical Biophysics, Institute of Physic and Institute of Bioengineering
Contact
- Céline Burkhard, Laboratory of Statistical Biophysics (LBS)