Date:	Wed, March 30, 2011
Time:	14:15
Place:	IRC East Wing Seminar Room

Abstract: Ecological systems and socioeconomic systems share several similarities in their function, and in the theoretical challenges they pose in understanding their dynamics. As the ecologist Simon Levin suggested, socioeconomic systems can be seen in fact as ecological systems, in which the typical ecological phenomena of exploitation, cooperation and parasitism are key features. From the opposite perspective, ecological systems are economic systems, in which competition for resources is key, and in which evolutionary processes shape the individual agents. I will present here a modelling approach drawn from evolutionary dynamic theories and based on the adaptation of traits that may help integrating two fields often assumed far from each other. Understanding how these two systems are linked in their dynamics is also a key for a sustainable management of our environment.