The University of North Dakota College of Arts and Sciences Mathematics Department will host the fall conference of the Mathematical Association of America—North Central Section Friday, October 23, and Saturday, October 24. Registration for all conference events starts at 7 p.m. Friday evening, Oct. 23, second floor Clifford Hall. A conference reception will be held from 9 to 10:30 p.m. Friday in the Norm Skalicky Tech Incubator atrium.
UND biologist Brett Goodwin will deliver a presentation titled "Math, Moths, and Mice: Using Math to Help Solve a Biological Riddle," at 8 p.m. Friday, Clifford Hall, Room 210. Francis Edward Su of Harvey Mudd College (Claremont, Calif.) will deliver a presentation titled "Voting in Agreeable Societies," at 11 a.m. Saturday, Clifford Hall, Room 210.
Details: Goodwin’s presentation—The interaction between math and biology will have a huge impact both fields. As an example of how math can inform a biological investigation, Goodwin will describe a recent ecological investigation that was only possible via mathematical tools.
Goodwin explained that gypsy moths were introduced into the United States from Europe and have become a seriouis forest pest in eastern part of the country and in Canada. During outbreak years, the moth caterpillars can eat all the leaves from all the trees in the forest.
"Biologists want to understanding how the moths survive, despite heavy predation by white-footed mice," he said. "These native forest mice have a broad diet of seeds, berries, and insects including gypsy moth pupae. But despite this predation, the gypsy moth has survived in North America for more than 100 years."
How do the moths survive in the face of the threat of being eaten to extinction by the mice?
"It turns out that there are two big reasons why," Goodwin said. First, mice do not forage equally in all places; some locations have low rates of mouse foraging and some places have higher rates of mouse foraging. Second, gypsy moth offspring don’t go very far from where they hatched to lay their own eggs; the caterpillars move by floating on the wind or by crawling among trees. Neither method of locomotion takes them very far.
“When we put those two ideas together in a mathematical model or a computer simulation, we find that the uneven, or patchy, foraging by mice and the short distances traveled by moths allow the moths to thrive despite the predation," Goodwin said. In essence, moths that find themselves in places of low mouse foraging survive to reproduce and then their offspring stay in the same area of low mouse foraging and they in turn survive to reproduce.
The models of this process that we have developed have produced new insights into how prey species (in this case the moth) can survive in an environment where the predator species (in this case the mouse) should eat the prey to extinction.
Details: Su’s presentation—When do majorities exist? How does the geometry of the political spectrum influence the outcome? What does mathematics have to say about how people behave? When mathematical objects have a social interpretation, the associated theorems have social applications. Su and his research team answer these questions. Su also will talk about doing research with undergraduates as part of the research team.
The the Mathematical Association of America-North Central Section comprises colleges and universities located in Manitoba, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota (see a complete list of members here:
http://pages.usiouxfalls.edu/maa/instMembers.html).
The conference is open to the public and is free for first-time attendees.
Contact:
Ryan Zerr, associate professor
Department of Mathematics
(701) 777-4605
ryan.zerr@und.edu 
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