Dr Luca Giuggioli

Summary

My general interest is the construction of spatially explicit theoretical models, validated through experimental observations, with the aim of explaining a variety of processes such as territoriality, foraging, disease spread and ecosystem nutrient cycling. Some of the features central to these apparently disparate processes is how animals move and interact among each other. My objective is to study and ultimately predict how certain spatio-temporal ecological patterns emerge from basic “microscopic” interactions and movement rules.

Home range and animal territoriality

Despite the vast literature on animal territoriality, quantification of its causes has eluded most studies. Due to the intrinsic integrative nature of territorial behaviour, useful theoretical tools, which measure how an animal responds to the presence of a neighbouring individual, are hard to find. Social interaction between conspecifics is often considered one of the main factors that shape how an animal occupies and shares space with its neighbours. Despite such an understanding, it is necessary to develop useful quantitative tools that predict how home range and home range overlap emerge from animal interaction. My goal, in this context, is to create such tools.

Search strategies

With the introduction of movement models (Lévy walks) that generalize correlated random walks one is able to measure the prey encounter rates of a given animal in an unpredictable low-density target environment and ask questions about search strategies. Within this framework the fine tuning of statistical methods that study the spatio-temporal trajectories becomes a key object to precisely quantify movement characteristics. I am interested in developing general quantitative methods that parameterize trajectory data in the context of anomalous (non-Brownian) diffusing animals. These statistical methods become necessary if one is interested in answering questions about if, when, and how animals forage efficiently.

Spatial ecology of infectious diseases

The spread of zoonotic diseases depends crucially on how often a susceptible and an infected individual encounter each other. In the context of rodents carrying the Hanta virus, for example, the transmission of the infection is believed to occur via simple direct (aggressive) contacts. In other cases, the transmission is thought to occur via the mediation of certain insects, such as for the Plague epidemics. Besides the details of the transmission dynamics, the number of times animals encounter one another is one of the basic mechanism that determines if an epidemics will eventually spread. I am interested in quantifying such encounter rates and use it in constructing theoretical models of epidemic propagation.

Biography

Academic history

• PhD 2004, Physics & Astronomy Department, University of New Mexico, US
• Postdoctoral associate at the Consortium of the Americas for Interdisciplinary Science, US, 2004-2006
• Postdoctoral associate at the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, Princeton University, US, 2007-2008

Memberships

Organisations

Department of Engineering Mathematics

School of Biological Sciences

Recent publications

• Giuggioli, L, Pérez-Becker, S & Sanders, DP 2013, ‘Encounter times in overlapping domains: Application to epidemic spread in a population of territorial animals’. Physical Review Letters, vol 110.
• Abramson, G, Giuggioli, L, Parmenter, R & Kenkre, VM 2013, ‘Quasi-one-dimensional waves in rodent population in heterogeneous habitats: A consequence of elevational gradients on spatio-temporal dynamics’. Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol 319., pp. 96-101
• Marten, F, Tsaneva-Atanasova, K & Giuggioli, L 2012, ‘Bacterial secretion and the role of diffusive and subdiffusive first passage processes’. PLoS ONE, vol 7., pp. e41421
• Giuggioli, L, Potts, J & Harris, S 2012, ‘Predicting oscillatory dynamics in the movement of territorial animals’. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, vol 9., pp. 1529 - 1543
• Potts, J, Harris, S & Giuggioli, L 2012, ‘Territorial Dynamics and Stable Home Range Formation for Central Place Foragers’. PLoS One, vol 7(3): e34033., pp. 1 - 11
• Giuggioli, L & Bartumeus, F 2011, ‘Linking site fidelity to animal movement’. Journal of Mathematical Biology.
• Giuggioli, L, Potts, J & Harris, S 2011, ‘Brownian walkers within subdiffusing territorial boundaries’. Physical Review E, vol 83, 061138., pp. 1 - 11
• Giuggioli, L, Potts, J & Harris, S 2011, ‘Animal Interactions and the emergence of territoriality’. PLoS Computational Biology, vol 7(3): e1002008., pp. 1 - 9
• Potts, J, Harris, S & Giuggioli, L 2011, ‘An anti-symmetric exclusion process for two particles on an infinite 1D lattice’. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, vol 44, 485003., pp. 1 - 16
• Bartumeus, F, Giuggioli, L, Louzao, M, Bretagnolle, V, Oro, D & Levin, S 2010, ‘Fishery discards impact on seabird movement patterns at regional scales’. Current Biology, vol 20(3)., pp. 215 - 222

View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system