Editorial

The 6th International Conference on Mathematical Modelling and Analysis of Populations in Biology (ICMA-VI) was held at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona USA on 20–22 October 2017. This conference series has been held every two years since its inception in 2007 at the University of Arizona. Previous conferences were held at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, and Western University, London, Ontario.

ICMA-VI was dedicated to the memory of Karl-Peter Hadeler, who died on 3 February 2017.

At ICMA-VI there were seventy eight talks and thirty three poster presentations on topics in population & ecological dynamics, adaptation & evolutionary dynamics, dynamics of infectious diseases, dispersal and distribution of populations, invasions and endangered species, and the management of natural resources. Plenary addresses were given by Henri Berestycki (Centre d’analyse et de mathématique sociales, Paris, France), Regis Ferriere (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA), Rosie Fisher (National Center for Atmospheric Research Climate & Global Dynamics, Boulder, Colorado, USA), and Mercedes Pascual (Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA). The JBD Lord Robert May Best Paper Prize (2015–2016) was awarded during the conference. The Prize this time was shared by two winners: Michael R. Kelly (Transylvania University Lexington, KY, USA) for his paper ‘The impact of spatial arrangements on epidemic disease dynamics and intervention strategies’ and Diana Knipl (MTA-SZTE Analysis and Stochastic Research Group, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary) for her paper ‘A new approach for designing disease intervention strategies in metapopulation models’.

The conference received support from the Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona; the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona; the Interdisciplinary Program in Applied Mathematics, University of Arizona; and the Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, Arizona State University.

This special issue in the Journal of Biological Dynamics consists of sixteen papers submitted by participants of ICMA-V. All submissions have undergone regular peer review.