What happens when physicists play (using mathematical instruments) with the genetics of populations? They may discover unexpected connections between migration and biodiversity, for example, as recently done by a group of researchers from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste and the Polytechnic University in Turin in a study published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
The effect of migration on biodiversity (intended as the coexistence of different genetic traits) is an open question: does migration increase or decrease the genetic variability of populations? Or is the relationship more complex than that?
“Our model, on the other hand, provided a very different result,” says Pierangelo Lombardo who worked on the study. “The function that relates the two variables is a curve, where with higher migration rates biodiversity can be seen to reach a minimum before starting to grow again.”
Read the full, original story: Technical Tests Of Biodiversity
