Kyle Dahlin - Research
What is Mathematical Biology? In the past, mathematics has been used successfully to model the natural world, most predominantly in physics and chemistry. Recently, with the explosion of quantitative data in the life sciences, mathematical modelling has become a more and more common tool in biology. From genetics to epidemiology, mathematics is playing an ever larger role in the study of biology.
Research Interests: My own interests lie specifically in theoretical ecology, the study of ecological systems. Within this field, researchers use mathematics to model the population dynamics of ecosystems. With my research, I would like to analyze individual based models by producing methods by which classical models can be derived from them.
Research Motivation: With the increasing changes in our world due to global climate change, the preservation of endangered species and management of invasive species has become even more urgent. Nowhere else in the United States is this more important than in Hawai‘i, where one third of all species on the United States endangered species list are found. The threat of the introduction of invasive species is existential for most Pacific nations. For example, the introduction of the brown tree snake, Boiga irregularis, led to the extinction of 75% of the islands native forest birds as well as snake-caused power outages on average every two days. The marine ecosystems surrounding Pacific nations are also under threat due to coral bleaching events caused by warming seas as well as the increasing traffic of shipping vessels. I hope that my research can help to provide strategies that policy makers and conservation managers can apply in order to deal with these many crises.