U.S.-Australia Workshshop: Frugivory and Seed Dispersal

Utah State University, Logan UT

Investigators

Abstract

Schupp 0456402 This award supports a U.S.-Australia Workshop on Frugivory and Seed Dispersal, July 9-16, 2005, at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. The co-organizers are Eugene Schupp, Utah State University, and David Westcott, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization), Canberra, Australia. Fifteen scientists from the United States will meet with 20 researchers supported by Australia. The workshop is integrated with an international symposium attended by a larger set of researchers, including some from New Zealand and several Asian countries. The discussions will incorporate discussion of international collaboration, especially the major issues that can best, or perhaps only, be addressed by large-scale international collaborative research. A symposium proceedings is planned, and outcomes from the workshop will be put on a workshop website to be developed either at Utah State University or Griffith University. Plant-animal interactions have interested ecologists since Darwin, but the fields of frugivory and seed dispersal developed slowly. Nonetheless, as publications increased rapidly over the last 30 years, three international symposia-workshops have been held to assess the field and develop future directions: 1985 and 1991 in Mexico and 2000 in Brazil. All resulted in publications that shaped the field and invigorated research. The objective of this fourth symposium is to bring a diverse group of international researchers together to assess future collaboration, build a sense of community, and identify common threads.