The Theoretical Ecology Lab Teas are designed to be informal meetings for members of the research groups of Simon Levin, Steve Pacala, Henry Horn, and Andy Dobson to give talks on their current research and receive feedback from their audience. The talks are usually 30 minutes, including the question and answer sessions, scheduled on Wednesdays at 1.30 PM. Additionally, other members of the Princeton University community and visitors are welcome to attend and to give presentations.

Talk schedules and email lists are maintained by Adrian de Froment and Jeanne DeNoyer. Please contact adriande[at]princeton[dot]edu or jdenoyer[at]princeton[dot]edu to have your name added to the labtea email list so that you can receive reminders about upcoming lab teas.

To view previous schedules and summaries, go to:


    Fall 2002     Spring 2003
    Fall 2003     Spring 2004
    Fall 2004     Spring 2005
    Fall 2005     Spring 2006     Summer 2006
    Fall 2006     Spring 2007
    Fall 2007

To view the latest schedule, click here.

Spring 2008
 

Titles and abstracts (posted approximately one week before the talk):

Parviez Hosseini

Disease in a Community Context: Pathogen-induced reversal of native dominance in California grasslands.

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Wilfred Ndifon

On the use of hemagglutination-inhibition for influenza surveillance: some theoretical considerations and implications for quantifying influenza virus’ antigenic evolution

The World Health Organization’s global influenza surveillance program routinely uses data obtained by means of the hemagglutination-inhibition (HI) assay to inform the prediction of influenza viruses that will be prevalent (or dominant) in future influenza seasons. The program has been fairly successful in predicting dominant influenza viruses with epidemic potential. However, there have been a number of failures that could have had devastating consequences if the missed dominant viruses had pandemic potential. In order to reduce the chances of such failures, there is great need for improvement in the interpretation of HI data. To that end, the kinetics of HI was investigated theoretically and a mathematical equation that illuminates the dependence of HI data on the values of key experimental parameters (e.g., the concentration of virus and the avidity of antibody for virus) was derived. The derived equation predicts, among other things, that the most commonly-used HI-based method of quantifying influenza virus’ antigenic evolution, namely the normalized heterologous HI titer (NHT), depends on non antigenically-relevant experimental parameters, much more so than does the Archetti-Horsfall method (AHM). This prediction is in line with previous empirical evidence and it suggests that the AHM should be the preferred method of quantifying influenza virus’ antigenic evolution. When applied to HI data on the antigenic evolution of influenza viruses during the period from 1933 to 2006, both the AHM and the NHT predict statistical patterns of antigenic evolution that are qualitatively similar on short time scales, but different on longer time scales.

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Eili Klein

Hospital-acquired infections with Staphylococcus aureus, especially methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) infections, are a major cause of illness and death and impose serious economic costs on patients and hospitals. I will discuss the recent magnitude and trend of these infections, as well as policy problems and options in controlling the emergence and spread of new resistant infections

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Ryan Chisholm

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Bethany Bradley

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Last updated 2nd January 2008
adriande[at]princeton[dot]edu