Tuesday October 31, 2006
Dr. Mike Rutter - Penn State Erie

Title: One Fish, Two Fish, Sick Fish, Well Fish

Abstract

The speaker has had a busy summer. This talk will be broken down into three parts. The first is a description of the hierarchical model used to assess tumor incidence rates on brown bullheads in Presque Isle Bay. PIB is one of 43 areas of concern in the Great Lakes. If it can be shown that liver and skin tumor incidence rates in PIB are similar or lower than what is observed in Lake Erie, PIB may be eligible for delisting. Second, I will describe the work done by two Mathematical Biology REU students, Brittany Parker (Merychurst) and Tamar Wilson (Mt. Holyoke).  Borrowing liberally from presentations they created, I will discuss how we used a surplus production model to estimate suggested harvest levels of Pacific halibut off the coast of Alaska. Finally, I will present a brief travelogue from the trip to Portugal Brittany and I took to present our work at the Interdisciplinary Mathematics and Statistical Techniques Conference in Tomar.