Description
In complex consumer-resource type systems, where diverse individuals are interconnected and interdependent, one can often anticipate what has become known as the tragedy of the commons, i.e., a situation, when overly efficient consumers exhaust the common resource, causing collapse of the entire population. In this dissertation I use mathematical modeling to explore different variations on the consumer-resource type systems, identifying some possible transitional regimes that can precede the tragedy of the commons. I then reformulate it as a game of a multi-player prisoner's dilemma and study two possible approaches for preventing it, namely direct modification of players' payoffs through punishment/reward and modification of the environment in which the interactions occur. I also investigate the questions of whether the strategy of resource allocation for reproduction or competition would yield higher fitness in an evolving consumer-resource type system and demonstrate that the direction in which the system will evolve will depend not only on the state of the environment but largely on the initial composition of the population. I then apply the developed framework to modeling cancer as an evolving ecological system and draw conclusions about some alternative approaches to cancer treatment.
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Details
Title
- Niche construction, sustainability and evolutionary ecology of cancer
Contributors
- Kareva, Irina (Author)
- Castillo-Chavez, Carlos (Thesis advisor)
- Collins, James (Committee member)
- Nagy, John (Committee member)
- Smith, Hal (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2012
Subjects
Resource Type
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Note
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thesisPartial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2012
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bibliographyIncludes bibliographical references (p. 144-158)
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Field of study: Applied mathematics for the life and social sciences
Citation and reuse
Statement of Responsibility
by Irina Kareva