Corina Tarnita and the Deep Mathematics of Social Insects
Listen now
Description
Corina Tarnita, professor of ecology and theoretical biology at Princeton University, brings the empirical power of mathematical modeling to the study of biological systems. She explains to host Steven Strogatz how that approach can illuminate the behaviors of social insects like termites - and how it solved the mystery of fairy circles in Namibia. This episode was produced by Dana Bialek. Read more at QuantaMagazine.org. Production and original music by Story Mechanics.
More Episodes
Published 03/17/22
An introduction to the new Quanta Magazine podcast The Joy of Why, in which noted mathematician and author Steven Strogatz talks with experts about some of the greatest scientific questions of all time.
Published 03/17/22
Behaviors are sometimes described as being "hardwired," but the work of the celebrated neuroscientist Eve Marder of Brandeis University has explored a crucial difference between neural circuits and engineered ones: Neurons need to be resilient in the face of their own ongoing biomolecular...
Published 05/17/21