The theory and applications of infinite dimensional dynamical systems have attracted the attention of scientists for quite some time. This book serves as an entrée for scholars beginning their journey into the world of dynamical systems, especially infinite dimensional spaces. The main approach involves the theory of evolutionary equations.

At a time of unprecedented expansion in the life sciences, evolution is the one theory that transcends all of biology. Any observation of a living system must ultimately be interpreted in the context of its evolution. Evolutionary change is the consequence of mutation and natural selection, which are two concepts that can be described by mathematical equations. Evolutionary Dynamics is concerned with these equations of life. In this book, Martin A. Nowak draws on the languages of biology and mathematics to outline the mathematical principles according to which life evolves. His work introduces readers to the powerful yet simple laws that govern the evolution of living systems, no matter how complicated they might seem. Evolution has become a mathematical theory, Nowak suggests, and any idea of an evolutionary process or mechanism should be studied in the context of the mathematical equations of evolutionary dynamics. His book presents a range of analytical tools that can be used to this end: fitness landscapes, mutation matrices, genomic sequence space, random drift, quasispecies, replicators, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, games in finite and infinite populations, evolutionary graph theory, games on grids, evolutionary kaleidoscopes, fractals, and spatial chaos. Nowak then shows how evolutionary dynamics applies to critical real-world problems, including the progression of viral diseases such as AIDS, the virulence of infectious agents, the unpredictable mutations that lead to cancer, the evolution of altruism, and even the evolution of human language. His book makes a clear and compelling case for understanding every living system—and everything that arises as a consequence of living systems—in terms of evolutionary dynamics.

With the unifying theme of abstract evolutionary equations, both linear and nonlinear, in a complex environment, the book presents a multidisciplinary blend of topics, spanning the fields of theoretical and applied functional analysis, partial differential equations, probability theory and numerical analysis applied to various models coming from theoretical physics, biology, engineering and complexity theory. Truly unique features of the book are: the first simultaneous presentation of two complementary approaches to fragmentation and coagulation problems, by weak compactness methods and by using semigroup techniques, comprehensive exposition of probabilistic methods of analysis of long term dynamics of dynamical systems, semigroup analysis of biological problems and cutting edge pattern formation theory. The book will appeal to postgraduate students and researchers specializing in applications of mathematics to problems arising in natural sciences and engineering.

Evolutionary game theory studies the behaviour of large populations of strategically interacting agents & is used by economists to predict in settings where traditional assumptions about the rationality of agents & knowledge may be inapplicable.

Every form of behaviour is shaped by trial and error. Such stepwise adaptation can occur through individual learning or through natural selection, the basis of evolution. Since the work of Maynard Smith and others, it has been realised how game theory can model this process. Evolutionary game theory replaces the static solutions of classical game theory by a dynamical approach centred not on the concept of rational players but on the population dynamics of behavioural programmes. In this book the authors investigate the nonlinear dynamics of the self-regulation of social and economic behaviour, and of the closely related interactions between species in ecological communities. Replicator equations describe how successful strategies spread and thereby create new conditions which can alter the basis of their success, i.e. to enable us to understand the strategic and genetic foundations of the endless chronicle of invasions and extinctions which punctuate evolution. In short, evolutionary game theory describes when to escalate a conflict, how to elicit cooperation, why to expect a balance of the sexes, and how to understand natural selection in mathematical terms.

The main goal of this book is to discuss and present results on well-posedness, regularity and long-time behavior of non-linear dynamic plate (shell) models described by von Karman evolutions. While many of the results presented here are the outgrowth of very recent studies by the authors, including a number of new original results here in print for the first time authors have provided a comprehensive and reasonably self-contained exposition of the general topic outlined above. This includes supplying all the functional analytic framework along with the function space theory as pertinent in the study of nonlinear plate models and more generally second order in time abstract evolution equations. While von Karman evolutions are the object under considerations, the methods developed transcendent this specific model and may be applied to many other equations, systems which exhibit similar hyperbolic or ultra-hyperbolic behavior (e.g. Berger's plate equations, Mindlin-Timoschenko systems, Kirchhoff-Boussinesq equations etc). In order to achieve a reasonable level of generality, the theoretical tools presented in the book are fairly abstract and tuned to general classes of second-order (in time) evolution equations, which are defined on abstract Banach spaces. The mathematical machinery needed to establish well-posedness of these dynamical systems, their regularity and long-time behavior is developed at the abstract level, where the needed hypotheses are axiomatized. This approach allows to look at von Karman evolutions as just one of the examples of a much broader class of evolutions. The generality of the approach and techniques developed are applicable (as shown in the book) to many other dynamics sharing certain rather general properties. Extensive background material provided in the monograph and self-contained presentation make this book suitable as a graduate textbook.