What can we infer about the history of a population from the patterns of genetic variation that we observe today? There is a long history of mathematical modelling of the demographic dynamics of a population and their effect on the genetic relationships between individuals sampled from that population, but the assumptions imposed to ensure analytic tractability are often very strict. Here we lay out a broad class of models that might describe how spatially heterogeneous populations live, die and reproduce. This class is particularly well suited to modelling plant populations. In particular, a novelty of our approach is that we explicitly model a juvenile phase, with important implications for quantities that we might try to infer from genetic data.

Tea and coffee will be served from 4.30pm.