This school is an overview of community ecology for interdisciplinary theoreticians, from physics or adjacent fields, who are interested in discovering this field or acquiring a more unified perspective on it.
Community ecology is the study of biological systems at levels of organization higher than the species or population. It investigates how populations interact, the emergence and persistence of collectives and networks, and the causes and consequences of their composition and their biodiversity.
Our aim is to use the language of dynamics and probabilities to offer a theoretical perspective on the unity and diversity of questions and insights in this field.
However, ecology is a highly empirical and fragmented discipline, and it is challenging to find a good entry point from other fields. Existing textbooks offer inside views of the discipline, e.g. lists of focal topics and applications, but the intuitions that have shaped it are often implicit. It may take years for an outside viewer to form a coherent picture of how to connect these puzzle pieces, why different perspectives coexist, and especially which questions are worth asking, i.e. where meaningful mathematical and theoretical advances can truly be contributed.
Community ecology spans the gap between two levels of description where quantitative models are arguably more easily grounded in physics and chemistry: individual organisms (e.g. metabolism and movement) and ecosystem processes (e.g. carbon cycling). Communities are perhaps harder to delineate empirically and study rigorously, and our goal will be to review why and how this might be done.
Prerequisites: Our main language will be continuous deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems, therefore a background in nonlinear and statistical physics and neighboring fields is the most appropriate.
The lecture materials are created by a team of researchers and lecturers with a physics background, currently working on both sides of the interface between physics and community ecology.
One originality compared to most schools is that the team works collaboratively on creating all the materials, to progress toward unifying and synthesizing our perspectives, rather than offer a scattershot of expert knowledge. Furthermore, our hope is to improve it over several editions, building up to an eventual textbook.
Dates: May 18-24, 2025 (Lectures: Sunday May 18, 14:00 to Saturday May 24, 12:30. Arrival possible on Sunday morning.)
Location: The school will take place near Tarascon-sur-Ariège, a small town in the French Pyrenees, accessible by train from the regional capital Toulouse.
Total fees: 600-750 euros covering tuition, accommodation and (vegetarian) meals.
Dormitory: 600 euros
Shared room (4-5 people): 670 euros
Shared room (2 people): 750 euros
Other options (e.g. single room, family-friendly setup): Contact us!
Participants lacking academic funding and/or facing financial hurdles may contact us to discuss the possibility of a partial or total scholarship for these fees on a case-by-case basis. In any case, participants are responsible for their own travel costs.
Applicants should submit the following documents to contact@intp.science
* A current academic CV
* A short cover letter (maximum 1 page) detailing their background, interest in the school, and if relevant, motive for asking a scholarship.
A local guide will offer mountaineering activities for an extra fee: rock climbing, canyoning & via ferrata. These planned activities will happen if enough participants register in advance.
Extra fees: 50 euros / 1 activity, 90 euros / 2 activities, 120 euros / 3 activites.
Alternatively, participants can self-organize to plan other activities (hiking, visiting prehistoric caves or neighboring cities, etc.)
There will be free time in the afternoon for spontaneous discussions and outdoors activities, and some time devoted to extra topics, practicals, topical guest seminars, etc.
Morning lectures:
