Department
Biological Sciences
Major
Biological Sciences
Research Advisor
Scharf, Andrea
Advisor's Department
Biological Sciences
Funding Source
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Abstract
Understanding how populations fluctuate is important for understanding how evolutionary pressures have shaped the life histories of species, such as reproductive patterns and aging. A laboratory ecosystem consisting of Caenorhabditis elegans and Escherichia coli and wormPOP, a simulation of this laboratory ecosystem, developed by Scharf and colleagues (Scharf et al., 2022) provides an opportunity to better understand population dynamics by tracking individual simulated worms and computing the emergent population dynamics. However, the output data consist of curves with peaks and troughs that are challenging to analyze and that were hypothesized to fit the mathematical definition of chaotic behavior. This project used mathematical methods to detect chaotic behavior in data from wormPOP under various culling conditions and implemented a second species of nematode, Pristionchus pacificus, in wormPOP to test the effect of a predatory species on the dynamics of the simulated ecosystem. Pristionchus pacificus is a nematode species related to Caenorhabditis elegans that is capable of feeding on the larvae of other nematode species.
Biography
Erik Bergstrom is actively involved in undergraduate research and is a member of /GEM. During 2021/2022, he was involved in research in Dr. Melanie Mormile's lab studying dessication tolerance in halophiles. From 2022 until currently, he has participated in OURE and an OURE fellows project in Dr. Andrea Scharf's lab studying the population dynamics of C. elegans in the Scharf lab's laboratory ecosystem and in wormPOP, a simulation of that ecosystem.
Research Category
Sciences
Presentation Type
OURE Fellows Final Oral Presentation
Document Type
Poster
Location
Innovation Forum - 1st Floor Innovation Lab
Presentation Date
10 April 2024, 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Included in
Mathematical Analysis of C elegans population dynamics
Innovation Forum - 1st Floor Innovation Lab
Understanding how populations fluctuate is important for understanding how evolutionary pressures have shaped the life histories of species, such as reproductive patterns and aging. A laboratory ecosystem consisting of Caenorhabditis elegans and Escherichia coli and wormPOP, a simulation of this laboratory ecosystem, developed by Scharf and colleagues (Scharf et al., 2022) provides an opportunity to better understand population dynamics by tracking individual simulated worms and computing the emergent population dynamics. However, the output data consist of curves with peaks and troughs that are challenging to analyze and that were hypothesized to fit the mathematical definition of chaotic behavior. This project used mathematical methods to detect chaotic behavior in data from wormPOP under various culling conditions and implemented a second species of nematode, Pristionchus pacificus, in wormPOP to test the effect of a predatory species on the dynamics of the simulated ecosystem. Pristionchus pacificus is a nematode species related to Caenorhabditis elegans that is capable of feeding on the larvae of other nematode species.
