Professor Christina Cobbold
- Professor of Mathematical Biology (Mathematics)
telephone:
01413304356
email:
Christina.Cobbold@glasgow.ac.uk
Room 331, Mathematics, Mathematics and Statistics Building, Glasgow G12 8QS
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8814-7688Research interests
My research interests are in mathematical biology, with a focus on spatial and evolutionary ecology. This involves interdisciplinary collaborations with biologists to develop, apply and analyse mathematical models in order to better understand population processes. I am particularly interested in assessing the effect of habitat fragmentation on species survival and the effect of environmental variation on the evolution and adaptation of life-history traits such as developmental timing. Mathematical approaches include analytical methods for dynamical systems, perturbation theory, and computational methods. Increasingly I have also become interested in formulating and testing quantitative models of biological and antigenic diversity.
Research groups
Publications
2024
Cobbold, C. , Dawes, A., Schwartz, E. J. and Tyson, R. C. (2024) Exploring interdisciplinary appointments: a focused perspective on mathematical biology. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, (Accepted for Publication)
2023
Carturan, B. S., Siewe, N., Cobbold, C. A. and Tyson, R. C. (2023) Bumble bee pollination and the wildflower/crop trade-off: When do wildflower enhancements improve crop yield? Ecological Modelling, 484, 110447. (doi: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2023.110447)
Andrade, R. and Cobbold, C. A. (2023) Heterogeneity in behaviour and movement can influence the stability of predator–prey periodic travelling waves. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 85(1), 1. (doi: 10.1007/s11538-022-01101-8) (PMID:36418648)
2022
Harris, C., Brummitt, N., Cobbold, C. A. and Reeve, R. (2022) Strong phylogenetic signals in global plant bioclimatic envelopes. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 31(11), pp. 2191-2203. (doi: 10.1111/geb.13564)
Cobbold, C. A. , Lutscher, F. and Yurk, B. (2022) Bridging the scale gap: predicting large-scale population dynamics from small-scale variation in strongly heterogeneous landscapes. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13(4), pp. 866-879. (doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.13799)
Zaker, N., Cobbold, C. A. and Lutscher, F. (2022) The effect of landscape fragmentation on Turing-pattern formation. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 19(3), pp. 2506-2537. (doi: 10.3934/mbe.2022116)
2021
Brass, D. P., Cobbold, C. A. , Ewing, D. A., Purse, B. V., Callaghan, A. and White, S. M. (2021) Phenotypic plasticity as a cause and consequence of population dynamics. Ecology Letters, 24(11), pp. 2406-2417. (doi: 10.1111/ele.13862) (PMID:34412157)
Ewing, D. A., Purse, B. V., Cobbold, C. A. and White, S. M. (2021) A novel approach for predicting risk of vector-borne disease establishment in marginal temperate environments under climate change: West Nile virus in the UK. Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, 18(178), 20210049. (doi: 10.1098/rsif.2021.0049) (PMID:34034529) (PMCID:PMC8150030)
2020
Mittell, E. A., Cobbold, C. A. , Ijaz, U. Z. , Kilbride, E. A., Moore, K. A. and Mable, B. K. (2020) Feral populations of Brassica oleracea along Atlantic coasts in western Europe. Ecology and Evolution, 10(20), pp. 11810-11825. (doi: 10.1002/ece3.6821) (PMID:33145003) (PMCID:PMC7593181)
Cobbold, C. A. and Stana, R. (2020) Should I stay or should I go: partially sedentary populations can outperform fully dispersing populations in response to climate-induced range shifts. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 82, 26. (doi: 10.1007/s11538-020-00700-7) (PMID:32006139) (PMCID:PMC6994560)
2019
Buckley, J., Daly, R. , Cobbold, C. A. , Burgess, K. and Mable, B. K. (2019) Changing environments and genetic variation: natural variation in inbreeding does not compromise short-term physiological responses. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 286(1915), 20192109. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.2109) (PMID:31744436) (PMCID:PMC6892046)
Hurford, A., Cobbold, C. A. and Molnár, P. K. (2019) Skewed temperature dependence affects range and abundance in a warming world. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 286(1908), 20191157. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.1157) (PMID:31387510) (PMCID:PMC6710591)
Jayaraman, S. et al. (2019) Application of long read sequencing to determine expressed antigen diversity in Trypanosoma brucei infections. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 13(4), e0007262. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0007262) (PMID:30943202) (PMCID:PMC6464242)
Ewing, D. A., Cobbold, C. A. , Purse, B. V., Schafer, S. M. and White, S. M. (2019) Uncovering mechanisms behind mosquito seasonality by integrating mathematical models and daily empirical population data: Culex pipiens in the UK. Parasites and Vectors, 12, 74. (doi: 10.1186/s13071-019-3321-2) (PMID:30732629) (PMCID:PMC6367758)
2018
Yurk, B. P. and Cobbold, C. A. (2018) Homogenization techniques for population dynamics in strongly heterogeneous landscapes. Journal of Biological Dynamics, 12(1), pp. 171-193. (doi: 10.1080/17513758.2017.1410238) (PMID:29228877)
2017
McCulloch, R. , Cobbold, C. A. , Figueiredo, L., Jackson, A., Morrison, L. J., Mugnier, M. R., Papavasiliou, N., Schnaufer, A. and Matthews, K. (2017) Emerging challenges in understanding trypanosome antigenic variation. Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, 1(6), pp. 585-592. (doi: 10.1042/ETLS20170104) (PMID:30271884) (PMCID:PMC6162063)
Barraquand, F. et al. (2017) Moving forward in circles: challenges and opportunities in modelling population cycles. Ecology Letters, 20(8), pp. 1074-1092. (doi: 10.1111/ele.12789)
Bush, A. et al. (2017) Connecting Earth observation to high-throughput biodiversity data. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 1, 0176. (doi: 10.1038/s41559-017-0176)
2016
Ewing, D. A., Cobbold, C. A. , Nunn, M. A., Purse, B. V. and White, S. M. (2016) Modelling the effect of temperature on the seasonal population dynamics of temperate mosquitoes. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 400, pp. 65-79. (doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2016.04.008) (PMID:27084359)
Reeve, R. , Leinster, T., Cobbold, C. A. , Thompson, J., Brummitt, N., Mitchell, S. N. and Matthews, L. (2016) How to partition diversity. arXiv, (Unpublished)
2015
Cobbold, C. A. , Lutscher, F. and Sherratt, J. A. (2015) Diffusion-driven instabilities and emerging spatial patterns in patchy landscapes. Ecological Complexity, 24, pp. 69-81. (doi: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2015.10.001)
Cobbold, C. A. , Teng, J. and Muldowney, J. S. (2015) The influence of host competition and predation on tick densities and management implications. Theoretical Ecology, 8(3), pp. 349-368. (doi: 10.1007/s12080-015-0255-y)
Hughes, J. S., Cobbold, C. A. , Haynes, K. and Dwyer, G. (2015) The effects of forest spatial structure on insect outbreak dynamics: insights from host-parasitoid models. American Naturalist, 183(5), E130-E152. (doi: 10.1086/680860) (PMID:25905513)
2014
Cobbold, C. A. and Lutscher, F. (2014) Mean occupancy time: linking mechanistic movement models, population dynamics and landscape ecology to population persistence. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 68(3), pp. 549-579. (doi: 10.1007/s00285-013-0642-1)
Gjini, E. A., Haydon, D. T. , Barry, J. D. and Cobbold, C. A. (2014) Revisiting the diffusion approximation to estimate evolutionary rates of gene family diversification. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 341, pp. 111-122. (doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2013.10.001)
2013
Moran, E. V., Berwick, S. and Cobbold, C. A. (2013) Effects of plant genotype and insect dispersal rate on the population dynamics of a forest pest. Ecology, 94(12), pp. 2792-2802. (doi: 10.1890/12-1708.1)
Gjini, E., Haydon, D.T. , Barry, J.D. and Cobbold, C.A. (2013) Linking the antigen archive structure to pathogen fitness in African trypanosomes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 280(1753), p. 20122129. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.2129)
2012
Leinster, T. and Cobbold, C. (2012) Measuring diversity: the importance of species similarity. Ecology, 93(3), pp. 477-489. (doi: 10.1890/10-2402.1)
Gjini, E., Haydon, D.T. , Barry, J.D. and Cobbold, C.A. (2012) The impact of mutation and gene conversion on the local diversification of antigen genes in African trypanosomes. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 29(11), pp. 3321-3331. (doi: 10.1093/molbev/mss166)
Higham, C.F., Morales, F., Cobbold, C.A. , Haydon, D.T. and Monckton, D.G. (2012) High levels of somatic DNA diversity at the myotonic dystrophy type 1 locus are driven by ultra-frequent expansion and contraction mutations. Human Molecular Genetics, 21(11), pp. 2450-2463. (doi: 10.1093/hmg/dds059)
2011
Cobbold, C.A. and Powell, J.A. (2011) Evolution stabilises the synchronising dynamics of poikilotherm life cylces. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 73(5), pp. 1052-1081. (doi: 10.1007/s11538-010-9552-1)
Hackett-Jones, E., White, A. and Cobbold, C.A. (2011) The evolution of developmental timing in natural enemy systems. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 275(1), pp. 1-11. (doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.12.040)
2010
Gjini, E., Haydon, D. , Barry, J. and Cobbold, C. (2010) Critical interplay between parasite differentiation, host immunity and antigenic variation in trypanosome infections. American Naturalist, 176(4), pp. 424-439. (doi: 10.1086/656276)
2009
Cobbold, C.A., Roland, J. and Lewis, M.A. (2009) The impact of parasitoid emergence time on host-parasitoid population dynamics. Theoretical Population Biology, 75(2-3), pp. 201-215. (doi: 10.1016/j.tpb.2009.02.004)
Hackett-Jones, E., Cobbold, C.A. and White, A. (2009) Coexistence of multiple parasitoids on a single host due to differences in parasitoid phenology. Theoretical Ecology, 2(1), pp. 19-31. (doi: 10.1007/s12080-008-0025-1)
Higham, C., Wilcox, D., Haydon, D. , Cobbold, C. and Monckton, D. (2009) Modelling dynamic DNA in mytonic dystrophy. In: Sixth International Workshop on Computational Systems Biology, WCSB 2009, Aarhus, Denmark, 10-12 Jun 2009, pp. 63-66.
2005
Cobbold, C.A., Lewis, M.A., Lutscher, F. and Roland, J. (2005) How parasitism affects critical patch-size in a host-parasitoid model: application to the forest tent caterpillar. Theoretical Population Biology, 67(2), pp. 109-125. (doi: 10.1016/j.tpb.2004.09.004)
2002
Cobbold, C.A., Sherratt, J.A. and Maxwell, S.R.J. (2002) Lipoprotein oxidation and its significance for atherosclerosis: a mathematical approach. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 64(1), pp. 65-95. (doi: 10.1006/bulm.2001.0267)
2001
Cobbold, C.A. (2001) The role of nitric oxide in the formation of keloid and hypertrophic lesions. Medical Hypotheses, 57(4), pp. 497-502. (doi: 10.1054/mehy.2001.1373)
2000
Cobbold, C.A. and Sherratt, J. A. (2000) Mathematical modelling of nitric oxide activity in wound healing can explain keloid and hypertrophic scarring. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 204(2), pp. 257-288. (doi: 10.1006/jtbi.2000.2012)
Articles
Cobbold, C. , Dawes, A., Schwartz, E. J. and Tyson, R. C. (2024) Exploring interdisciplinary appointments: a focused perspective on mathematical biology. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, (Accepted for Publication)
Carturan, B. S., Siewe, N., Cobbold, C. A. and Tyson, R. C. (2023) Bumble bee pollination and the wildflower/crop trade-off: When do wildflower enhancements improve crop yield? Ecological Modelling, 484, 110447. (doi: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2023.110447)
Andrade, R. and Cobbold, C. A. (2023) Heterogeneity in behaviour and movement can influence the stability of predator–prey periodic travelling waves. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 85(1), 1. (doi: 10.1007/s11538-022-01101-8) (PMID:36418648)
Harris, C., Brummitt, N., Cobbold, C. A. and Reeve, R. (2022) Strong phylogenetic signals in global plant bioclimatic envelopes. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 31(11), pp. 2191-2203. (doi: 10.1111/geb.13564)
Cobbold, C. A. , Lutscher, F. and Yurk, B. (2022) Bridging the scale gap: predicting large-scale population dynamics from small-scale variation in strongly heterogeneous landscapes. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 13(4), pp. 866-879. (doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.13799)
Zaker, N., Cobbold, C. A. and Lutscher, F. (2022) The effect of landscape fragmentation on Turing-pattern formation. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 19(3), pp. 2506-2537. (doi: 10.3934/mbe.2022116)
Brass, D. P., Cobbold, C. A. , Ewing, D. A., Purse, B. V., Callaghan, A. and White, S. M. (2021) Phenotypic plasticity as a cause and consequence of population dynamics. Ecology Letters, 24(11), pp. 2406-2417. (doi: 10.1111/ele.13862) (PMID:34412157)
Ewing, D. A., Purse, B. V., Cobbold, C. A. and White, S. M. (2021) A novel approach for predicting risk of vector-borne disease establishment in marginal temperate environments under climate change: West Nile virus in the UK. Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, 18(178), 20210049. (doi: 10.1098/rsif.2021.0049) (PMID:34034529) (PMCID:PMC8150030)
Mittell, E. A., Cobbold, C. A. , Ijaz, U. Z. , Kilbride, E. A., Moore, K. A. and Mable, B. K. (2020) Feral populations of Brassica oleracea along Atlantic coasts in western Europe. Ecology and Evolution, 10(20), pp. 11810-11825. (doi: 10.1002/ece3.6821) (PMID:33145003) (PMCID:PMC7593181)
Cobbold, C. A. and Stana, R. (2020) Should I stay or should I go: partially sedentary populations can outperform fully dispersing populations in response to climate-induced range shifts. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 82, 26. (doi: 10.1007/s11538-020-00700-7) (PMID:32006139) (PMCID:PMC6994560)
Buckley, J., Daly, R. , Cobbold, C. A. , Burgess, K. and Mable, B. K. (2019) Changing environments and genetic variation: natural variation in inbreeding does not compromise short-term physiological responses. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 286(1915), 20192109. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.2109) (PMID:31744436) (PMCID:PMC6892046)
Hurford, A., Cobbold, C. A. and Molnár, P. K. (2019) Skewed temperature dependence affects range and abundance in a warming world. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 286(1908), 20191157. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.1157) (PMID:31387510) (PMCID:PMC6710591)
Jayaraman, S. et al. (2019) Application of long read sequencing to determine expressed antigen diversity in Trypanosoma brucei infections. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 13(4), e0007262. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0007262) (PMID:30943202) (PMCID:PMC6464242)
Ewing, D. A., Cobbold, C. A. , Purse, B. V., Schafer, S. M. and White, S. M. (2019) Uncovering mechanisms behind mosquito seasonality by integrating mathematical models and daily empirical population data: Culex pipiens in the UK. Parasites and Vectors, 12, 74. (doi: 10.1186/s13071-019-3321-2) (PMID:30732629) (PMCID:PMC6367758)
Yurk, B. P. and Cobbold, C. A. (2018) Homogenization techniques for population dynamics in strongly heterogeneous landscapes. Journal of Biological Dynamics, 12(1), pp. 171-193. (doi: 10.1080/17513758.2017.1410238) (PMID:29228877)
McCulloch, R. , Cobbold, C. A. , Figueiredo, L., Jackson, A., Morrison, L. J., Mugnier, M. R., Papavasiliou, N., Schnaufer, A. and Matthews, K. (2017) Emerging challenges in understanding trypanosome antigenic variation. Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, 1(6), pp. 585-592. (doi: 10.1042/ETLS20170104) (PMID:30271884) (PMCID:PMC6162063)
Barraquand, F. et al. (2017) Moving forward in circles: challenges and opportunities in modelling population cycles. Ecology Letters, 20(8), pp. 1074-1092. (doi: 10.1111/ele.12789)
Bush, A. et al. (2017) Connecting Earth observation to high-throughput biodiversity data. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 1, 0176. (doi: 10.1038/s41559-017-0176)
Ewing, D. A., Cobbold, C. A. , Nunn, M. A., Purse, B. V. and White, S. M. (2016) Modelling the effect of temperature on the seasonal population dynamics of temperate mosquitoes. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 400, pp. 65-79. (doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2016.04.008) (PMID:27084359)
Reeve, R. , Leinster, T., Cobbold, C. A. , Thompson, J., Brummitt, N., Mitchell, S. N. and Matthews, L. (2016) How to partition diversity. arXiv, (Unpublished)
Cobbold, C. A. , Lutscher, F. and Sherratt, J. A. (2015) Diffusion-driven instabilities and emerging spatial patterns in patchy landscapes. Ecological Complexity, 24, pp. 69-81. (doi: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2015.10.001)
Cobbold, C. A. , Teng, J. and Muldowney, J. S. (2015) The influence of host competition and predation on tick densities and management implications. Theoretical Ecology, 8(3), pp. 349-368. (doi: 10.1007/s12080-015-0255-y)
Hughes, J. S., Cobbold, C. A. , Haynes, K. and Dwyer, G. (2015) The effects of forest spatial structure on insect outbreak dynamics: insights from host-parasitoid models. American Naturalist, 183(5), E130-E152. (doi: 10.1086/680860) (PMID:25905513)
Cobbold, C. A. and Lutscher, F. (2014) Mean occupancy time: linking mechanistic movement models, population dynamics and landscape ecology to population persistence. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 68(3), pp. 549-579. (doi: 10.1007/s00285-013-0642-1)
Gjini, E. A., Haydon, D. T. , Barry, J. D. and Cobbold, C. A. (2014) Revisiting the diffusion approximation to estimate evolutionary rates of gene family diversification. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 341, pp. 111-122. (doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2013.10.001)
Moran, E. V., Berwick, S. and Cobbold, C. A. (2013) Effects of plant genotype and insect dispersal rate on the population dynamics of a forest pest. Ecology, 94(12), pp. 2792-2802. (doi: 10.1890/12-1708.1)
Gjini, E., Haydon, D.T. , Barry, J.D. and Cobbold, C.A. (2013) Linking the antigen archive structure to pathogen fitness in African trypanosomes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences, 280(1753), p. 20122129. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.2129)
Leinster, T. and Cobbold, C. (2012) Measuring diversity: the importance of species similarity. Ecology, 93(3), pp. 477-489. (doi: 10.1890/10-2402.1)
Gjini, E., Haydon, D.T. , Barry, J.D. and Cobbold, C.A. (2012) The impact of mutation and gene conversion on the local diversification of antigen genes in African trypanosomes. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 29(11), pp. 3321-3331. (doi: 10.1093/molbev/mss166)
Higham, C.F., Morales, F., Cobbold, C.A. , Haydon, D.T. and Monckton, D.G. (2012) High levels of somatic DNA diversity at the myotonic dystrophy type 1 locus are driven by ultra-frequent expansion and contraction mutations. Human Molecular Genetics, 21(11), pp. 2450-2463. (doi: 10.1093/hmg/dds059)
Cobbold, C.A. and Powell, J.A. (2011) Evolution stabilises the synchronising dynamics of poikilotherm life cylces. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 73(5), pp. 1052-1081. (doi: 10.1007/s11538-010-9552-1)
Hackett-Jones, E., White, A. and Cobbold, C.A. (2011) The evolution of developmental timing in natural enemy systems. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 275(1), pp. 1-11. (doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.12.040)
Gjini, E., Haydon, D. , Barry, J. and Cobbold, C. (2010) Critical interplay between parasite differentiation, host immunity and antigenic variation in trypanosome infections. American Naturalist, 176(4), pp. 424-439. (doi: 10.1086/656276)
Cobbold, C.A., Roland, J. and Lewis, M.A. (2009) The impact of parasitoid emergence time on host-parasitoid population dynamics. Theoretical Population Biology, 75(2-3), pp. 201-215. (doi: 10.1016/j.tpb.2009.02.004)
Hackett-Jones, E., Cobbold, C.A. and White, A. (2009) Coexistence of multiple parasitoids on a single host due to differences in parasitoid phenology. Theoretical Ecology, 2(1), pp. 19-31. (doi: 10.1007/s12080-008-0025-1)
Cobbold, C.A., Lewis, M.A., Lutscher, F. and Roland, J. (2005) How parasitism affects critical patch-size in a host-parasitoid model: application to the forest tent caterpillar. Theoretical Population Biology, 67(2), pp. 109-125. (doi: 10.1016/j.tpb.2004.09.004)
Cobbold, C.A., Sherratt, J.A. and Maxwell, S.R.J. (2002) Lipoprotein oxidation and its significance for atherosclerosis: a mathematical approach. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 64(1), pp. 65-95. (doi: 10.1006/bulm.2001.0267)
Cobbold, C.A. (2001) The role of nitric oxide in the formation of keloid and hypertrophic lesions. Medical Hypotheses, 57(4), pp. 497-502. (doi: 10.1054/mehy.2001.1373)
Cobbold, C.A. and Sherratt, J. A. (2000) Mathematical modelling of nitric oxide activity in wound healing can explain keloid and hypertrophic scarring. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 204(2), pp. 257-288. (doi: 10.1006/jtbi.2000.2012)
Conference Proceedings
Higham, C., Wilcox, D., Haydon, D. , Cobbold, C. and Monckton, D. (2009) Modelling dynamic DNA in mytonic dystrophy. In: Sixth International Workshop on Computational Systems Biology, WCSB 2009, Aarhus, Denmark, 10-12 Jun 2009, pp. 63-66.
Supervision
- Antunes Costa De Andrade, Renato
Modelling spatial heterogeneity in ecological systems - Bissett, Laura
Disentangling environmental and anthropogenic impacts on malaria vector population structure and community - Davison, Emily
Designing advanced statistical inference methods for learning the parameters of a mathematical biodiversity model - Durrant, Rowan
Metapopulations and infectious disease dynamics
Research datasets
2022
Antunes Costa De Andrade, R. and Cobbold, C. (2022) Computing Omega1 - Heterogeneity in behaviour and movement can influence the stability of predator-prey periodic travelling waves. [Data Collection]
