Mathematical Evolutionary Biology Mathematical biology sounds, at first, like a contradiction in terms. Biologists are supposed to observe and describe living systems, not equations. The face of biology is changing, however. Today, a lot of research is performed in front of a lab bench, seeing little more than DNA or protein extracts from an organism. And mathematics, especially statistics, has become an essential tool.
Most mathematical biology involves the interpretation of data.
Yet traces of the ancestry of living organisms are recorded in their genetic codes. Organisms that are closely related are characterised by very similar DNA sequences, whereas distantly related organisms have few similarities. Models, with varying degrees of complexity and realism, translate these DNA sequences into an estimate of the most likely phylogenetic tree. Yet models can be used not just to interpret data, but to tell us how the world might work. Darwin's theory of evolution, although essentially verbal, is a prime example.