Dr. Istvan Karsai Coauthors Book On Mathematical Biology

From East Tennessee State University:

June 18, 2021

JOHNSON CITY — Dr. Istvan Karsai, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at East Tennessee State University, along with former ETSU Basler chairholders George Kampis and Thomas Schmickl, hope to spur discussions about the ways in which mathematics can help researchers better understand ecology, how ecology can provide new ways of thinking in mathematics, and how all of that as mathematical biology relates to such events as climate change and their effect on the world’s organisms.

In their new book, a monograph titled “Resilience and Stability of Ecological and Social Systems,” the trio of researchers have published more than 20 years of personal research, all written with readers and researchers from multiple disciplines in mind, in an effort to influence positive, cross-disciplinary discussion and debate.

For a better understanding of its content, Karsai pointed to the book’s preface, which states that its goal “is to provide neither a textbook nor a review of the field” but rather to inspire mathematicians and biologists to further investigate the collection of findings discussed within. Those include a central theme of resilience in ecological and social systems, with resilience being “a central problem in climate change, sustainability, ecology, economy, and the social sciences.”

“Our goal was to write a monograph on the subject, on the basis of our own research in this field,” said Karsai. “Such an approach is essentially biased and opinionated, and may generate more questions than answers; all are properties of an ongoing scientific inquiry.”

As a branch of biology that deals with the relationship of organisms to one another, and to their physical surroundings, how does ecology blend into mathematics? Through the resilience of ecological and social systems, said Karsai.

“I am not particularly in favor of scientific jargon, and the whole book is written in a way that it can be understandable for people not in the strict scientific area,” he said.

Divided into two parts, the book first discusses a simple population growth model, leading readers toward more complex problems such as the stability of interacting species, turning fragmented habitats into a more stable state, and analyzing the effect of fire to ecosystems. Secondly, the stability and resilience of insect societies are discussed as model systems of ecological, economical and societal systems. “In some ways, they are simpler than ecological systems and human societies, and they are more accessible (for experimental testing),” the book’s foreword notes.

“We can learn a lot from these systems on how we can help stabilize and manage resources,” continues the foreword by fellow researcher Ferenc Jordan. An example he points to is “why bees do not hoard pollen, a resource which could be hoarded and commonly becomes scarce within the colony, the lack thereof which forces avoidable, larval cannibalism within the colony several times a year. So, the question remains, why do they do that?”

Noting that there are no master equations to mathematically describe systems biologically, the monograph aims to show how master equations, originally used to describe electrical circuits in physics, can be used to describe a biological system and how biology can be better understood this way.

Dr. George Kampis is a professor in the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, and Dr. Thomas Schmickl is a professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Graz in Graz, Austria. Both have served as chairholders of ETSU’s Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence in the Arts, Rhetoric and Science.

The book is recommended for students and researchers who are interested in complex biological systems, from mathematicians to biologists and engineers to social scientists.
For more information, contact Karsai at karsai@etsu.edu or 423-439-6838.

This press release was produced by East Tennessee State University. The views expressed are the author's own.