Individual Assignment 2

This assignment will be due on Friday February 22nd and is second individual assignment. The assignment will be based on the article about Allometry and Simple Epidemic Models for Microparasites by Leo and Dodson on pages 114-118 of our text. This assignment will be a way for me to assess some of your basics skills: interpreting differential equation, parameter determination, researching a biological topic, and solving differential equations. This assignment will also serve as a warm up to our final group project which will be based upon the modeling of an epidemic.

1. Interpreting differential equations: Look at the differential equations a-e in table 1. Describe the assumptions about the microparasites and the host population that each of these models attempts to capture. (All these models are different and it should be clear in your description what these differences are.)

2. Parameter determination: For at least one of the systems a-e determine how many of the parameters in the system the Authors claim can determined by the the host's body mass and interpret any remaining parameters? (Hint: look carefully at figure 1 and its caption.)

3. Research: On the second page of the article there is a claim that "estimates of the basic host demography (nu, mu and K) are available for many species. Go out and find some!

4. Solving differential equations: For at least one of the systems a-e fix the parameters in a way consistent wit the description in the article and look at the system's solution graphically. Exam any "interesting" equilibrium values. Which equilibria are stable? Is there any damped periodic behavior near the equilibrium or not?