Math Biology Seminar: Thomas Hillen

The green sea turtle Chelonia midas travels for thousands of miles from the coast of Brazil to a small island in the Atlantic Ocean, Ascension Island. There the turtles lay their eggs into the warm sand on the beach. It is a classic scientific challenge to understand the navigational skills of the turtles and several orienteering mechanisms are discussed, such as geomagnetic information, chemotaxis, Atlantic flow patterns etc.

In this talk I will present a mathematical model for the homing of sea turtles and discuss how it can be used to identify the navigational mechanisms of sea turtles.

(joint work with K.J. Painter).