Sergei Petrovskii is a Russian-born British mathematician whose research mostly focuses on modeling of complex ecological systems. He is a professor of Applied Mathematics at the

University of Leicester The University of Leicester ( ) is a public university, public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park, Leicester, Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, Univ ...

. In 2015, he led a study that found that if the ocean temperature were to increase by about six degrees Celsius due to

global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

phytoplankton Phytoplankton () are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater Aquatic ecosystem, ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek language, Greek words (), meaning 'plant', and (), mea ...

might stop producing

oxygen Oxygen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group (periodic table), group in the periodic table, a highly reactivity (chemistry), reactive nonmetal (chemistry), non ...

. This would lead to shortages of oxygen in the atmosphere, which could be very harmful to humans. Petrovskii said, "About two thirds of the planet's total atmospheric oxygen is produced by ocean phytoplankton - and therefore cessation would result in the depletion of atmospheric oxygen on a global scale. This would likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans." Petrovskii's study appeared in the ''Bulletin of Mathematical Biology''. Another stream of his research is modelling of biological invasions where he discovered a new phenomenon called "patchy invasion". Contrary to a commonly used paradigm of alien species spread by a travelling population front, in the patchy invasion the invasive species spreads into new areas by creating individual patches not preceded by a front propagation. Patchy invasion has been observed in several invasions of insects and birds and has been studied theoretically using a variety of growth-dispersal models.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people English mathematicians Academics of the University of Leicester {{UK-mathematician-stub