How Does the Leopard Get Their Spots?

Bill Langhoff
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
MS Graduate Student

“In his 1952 paper “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”, Alan Turing described a mathematical model for how spatial patterns could arise out of a homogeneous state. In this talk, we will introduce and examine the reaction-diffusion model for biological pattern formation, which has been shown to predict patterns like those we see in nature. After introducing and motivating the problem, we will consider the Turing instability, and analyze conditions which allow it to occur.”