A lot, says Dr. Temple H. Fay, a University of Southern Mississippi mathematics professor. All of the lectures are free and open to the public.
Receptions follow each presentation.
Fay initially became interested in using mathematics as a wildlife management tool as a result of research by one of his master's students, Cornelia Greeff of South Africa. Greeff is part of a unique program that allows exchanges of students, faculty and staff between Southern Miss and Technikon Pretoria, a four-year institution in Pretoria, South Africa. Established in 1995, it's the only international program that allows USM-enrolled students to earn a graduate degree while remaining in a foreign nation. You can predict the growth rate of wildebeest and lion populations and can calculate what the chances are of an encounter between the two ending up with the wildebeest being eaten. We put this together as a pair of differential equations describing the growth of both animal populations.