Date: Tue. January 28, 2025
Event: FAU MoD Lecture
Event type: On-site / Online
Organized by: FAU MoD, the Research Center for Mathematics of Data at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany)

FAU MoD Lecture: Do you think you understand sex and death? Why predictions about biological processes require more than just intuition
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Hanna Kokko
Affiliation: Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution (iomE). Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (Germany)

Abstract. 

I sometimes state, in a slightly tongue in cheek manner, that biologists are the only people who do not understand why sex exists. This is because they appreciate that asexual reproduction is also often possible, and can be very efficient. I will illuminate some of the complications that follow using Daphnia (waterfleas) as an example, and then I will turn to a very different topic: evolution of senescence. If natural selection favours, all else being equal, longer lifespans, it is difficult to explain why there is so much variation in lifespans in nature. This talk, as a whole, illuminates the theoretical side of evolutionary biology (why biologists, too, need a dose of equations in their training).

See more details of this FAU MoD lecture at:

https://mod.fau.eu/events/fau-mod-lecture-do-you-think-you-understand-sex-and-death-why-predictions-about-biological-processes-require-more-than-just-intuition/