Prof. Natalia Petrovskaya (University of Birmingham, UK)
Biography
Dr Natalia Petrovskaya is an applied mathematician and an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics in the University of Birmingham, UK. She has an MSci degree in theoretical physics and applied mathematics and her PhD degree is in applied numerical analysis. Her current research interests concern mathematical modelling and computer simulation of spatial ecological systems. In particular, she is interested in development of non-conventional numerical algorithms for ecological problems where standard numerical methods do not work or are not efficient because of the problem complexity.
"Island colonisation by invasive plant"
Eradicating invasive species from islands is an important requirement in conservation programmes worldwide because alien species are considered as one of the primary threats to native biodiversity on islands [1]. Successful eradication of the invasive species requires practitioners to understand what factors make an impact on the rate of island colonisation and what can be done for preventing or slowing down it. In our talk, we consider a mathematical model of island colonisation by an invasive plant coming from the mainland with wind and/or water where we use approximation of the 2-D spatial domain by a simple 1-D geometry. We employ an integro-difference framework [2] to deal with a stage-structured population and incorporate the effects of the heterogeneous environment where the mainland and an island are separated by water. We then investigate spread of the invasive plant under various conditions of island colonisation where propagation regimes at the beginning of invasion previously studied in [3] are of particular interest.
This is joint work with Bradly Deeley, University of Birmingham, UK.
References
[1] Simberloff, D., Keitt, B., Will, D., et al. (2018). Yes we can! Exciting progress and prospects for controlling invasives on islands and beyond. Western North American Naturalist, 78(4):942-958.
[2] Deeley, B., Petrovskaya, N. (2022). Propagation of invasive plant species in the presence of a road. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 548(7):111196.
[3] Deeley, B. Petrovskaya, N. (2024). Transient propagation of the invasion front in the homogeneous landscape and in the presence of a road. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 86:78.
