Impact of climate change on insect pests of trees

There are many interactions and it is exetremely difficult to predict the impact of climate change on insect pests in the future, but we may expect an increase of certain primary pests as well as secondary pests and invasive specie

The coalescent effective size of age-structured populations

We establish convergence to the Kingman coalescent for a class of age-structured population models with time-constant population size. Time is discrete with unit called a year. Offspring numbers in a year may depend on mother's age.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/105051605000000223 in the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Rank-dependent Galton-Watson processes and their pathwise duals

We introduce a modified Galton-Watson process using the framework of an infinite system of particles labeled by $(x,t)$, where $x$ is the rank of the particle born at time $t$. The key assumption concerning the offspring numbers of different particles is that they are independent, but their distributions may depend on the particle label $(x,t)$. For the associated system of coupled monotone Markov chains, we address the issue of pathwise duality elucidated by a remarkable graphical representation, with the trajectories of the primary Markov chains and their duals coalescing together to form forest graphs on a two-dimensional grid

Splitting trees with neutral Poissonian mutations II: Largest and Oldest families

We consider a supercritical branching population, where individuals have i.i.d. lifetime durations (which are not necessarily exponentially distributed) and give birth (singly) at constant rate. We assume that individuals independently experience neutral mutations, at constant rate $\theta$ during their lifetimes, under the infinite-alleles assumption: each mutation instantaneously confers a brand new type, called allele or haplotype, to its carrier. The type carried by a mother at the time when she gives birth is transmitted to the newborn. We are interested in the sizes and ages at time $t$ of the clonal families carrying the most abundant alleles or the oldest ones, as $t\to\infty$, on the survival event. Intuitively, the results must depend on how the mutation rate $\theta$ and the Malthusian parameter $\alpha>0$ compare. Hereafter, $N\equiv N_t$ is the population size at time $t$, constants $a,c$ are scaling constants, whereas $k,k'$ are explicit positive constants which depend on the parameters of the model. When $\alpha>\theta$, the most abundant families are also the oldest ones, they have size $cN^{1-\theta/\alpha}$ and age $t-a$. When $\alpha<\theta$, the oldest families have age $(\alpha /\theta)t+a$ and tight sizes; the most abundant families have sizes $k\log(N)-k'\log\log(N)+c$ and all have age $(\theta-\alpha)^{-1}\log(t)$. When $\alpha=\theta$, the oldest families have age $kt-k'\log(t)+a$ and tight sizes; the most abundant families have sizes $(k\log(N)-k'\log\log(N)+c)^2$ and all have age $t/2$. Those informal results can be stated rigorously in expectation. Relying heavily on the theory of coalescent point processes, we are also able, when $\alpha\leq\theta$, to show convergence in distribution of the joint, properly scaled ages and sizes of the most abundant/oldest families and to specify the limits as some explicit Cox processes

On the continued Erlang loss function

We prove two fundamental results in teletraffic theory. The first is the frequently conjectured convexity of the analytic continuation B(x, a) of the classical Erlang loss function as a function of x, x 0. The second is the uniqueness of the solution of the basic set of equations associated with the ‘equivalent random method’

Coalescent approximation for structured populations in a stationary random environment

We establish convergence to the Kingman coalescent for the genealogy of a geographically - or otherwise - structured version of the Wright-Fisher population model with fast migration. The new feature is that migration probabilities may change in a random fashion. This brings a novel formula for the coalescent effective population size (EPS). We call it a quenched EPS to emphasize the key feature of our model - random environment. The quenched EPS is compared with an annealed (mean-field) EPS which describes the case of constant migration probabilities obtained by averaging the random migration probabilities over possible environments

Populations with interaction and environmental dependence: from few, (almost) independent, members into deterministic evolution of high densities

Many populations, e.g. of cells, bacteria, viruses, or replicating DNA molecules, start small, from a few individuals, and grow large into a noticeable fraction of the environmental carrying capacity $K$. Typically, the elements of the initiating, sparse set will not be hampering each other and their number will grow from $Z_0=z_0$ in a branching process or Malthusian like, roughly exponential fashion, $Z_t \sim a^tW$, where $Z_t$ is the size at discrete time $t\to\infty$, $a>1$ is the offspring mean per individual (at the low starting density of elements, and large $K$), and $W$ a sum of $z_0$ i.i.d. random variables. It will, thus, become detectable (i.e. of the same order as $K$) only after around $\log K$ generations, when its density $X_t:=Z_t/K$ will tend to be strictly positive. Typically, this entity will be random, even if the very beginning was not at all stochastic, as indicated by lower case $z_0$, due to variations during the early development. However, from that time onwards, law of large numbers effects will render the process deterministic, though initiated by the random density at time log $K$, expressed through the variable $W$. Thus, $W$ acts both as a random veil concealing the start and a stochastic initial value for later, deterministic population density development. We make such arguments precise, studying general density and also system-size dependent, processes, as $K\to\infty$. As an intrinsic size parameter, $K$ may also be chosen to be the time unit. The fundamental ideas are to couple the initial system to a branching process and to show that late densities develop very much like iterates of a conditional expectation operator.Comment: presented at IV Workshop on Branching Processes and their Applications at Badajoz, Spain, 10-13 April, 201

Information criteria determine the number of active sources

With the neuroelectromagnetic inverse problem, the optimal choice of the number of sources is a difficult problem, especially in the presence of correlated noise. In this paper we present a number of information criteria that help to solve this problem. They are based on the probability density function of the measurements or their eigenvalues. Make use of the Akaike or MDL (minimum description length) correction term and all employ some sort of noise information. By extensive simulations we investigated the conditions under which these criteria yield reliable estimations. We were able to quantify two major factors of influence: (1) the precision of the noise information and (2) the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Here defined as the ratio of the smallest signal eigenvalues and the average of the noise eigenvalues. Furthermore, we found that the Akaike correction term tends to overestimate, due to its greater sensibility to the precision of the noise informatio

Convergence of the age structure of general schemes of population processes

We consider a family of general branching processes with reproduction parameters depending on the age of the individual as well as the population age structure and a parameter $K$, which may represent the carrying capacity. These processes are Markovian in the age structure. In a previous paper the Law of Large Numbers as $K\to\infty$ was derived. Here we prove the Central Limit Theorem, namely the weak convergence of the fluctuation processes in an appropriate Skorokhod space. We also show that the limit is driven by a stochastic partial differential equation

Limit theorems for multi-type general branching processes with population dependence

A general multi-type population model is considered, where individuals live and reproduce according to their age and type, but also under the influence of the size and composition of the entire population. We describe the dynamics of the population density as a measure-valued process and obtain its asymptotics, as the population grows with the environmental carrying capacity. "Density" in this paper generally refers to the population size as compared to the carrying capacity. Thus, a deterministic approximation is given, in the form of a Law of Large Numbers, as well as a Central Limit Theorem. Migration can also be incorporated. This general framework is then adapted to model sexual reproduction, with a special section on serial monogamic mating systems