US-Australia Workshop: Interdisciplinary Solutions to Evolutionary Challenges in Food, Health and the Environment

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

0941759 Sih Title: U.S.-Australia Workshop: Interdisciplinary Solutions to Evolutionary Challenges in Food, Health and the Environment This award supports the participation of American researchers, postdocs, and graduate students in a U.S.-Australia workshop on interdisciplinary solutions to evolutionary challenges in food, health and the environment to be held in Australia in early 2010. The co-organizers are Professors Andrew Sih and Scott Carroll at the University of California, Davis, Dr. Gary Fitt at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Canberra and Professor Scott O?Neill at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. The workshop will take place at the Heron Island Research Station on Australia?s Great Barrier Reef. It brings basic scientists into collaboration with applied scientists, practitioners and managers. It will include experts in evolutionary approaches to health and medicine, sustainable agriculture, commodities production and conservation. Breakout groups will be discussing 1) climate change and evolving diseases as challenges to public health management; 2) evolutionary challenges to implementation and regulation of sustainable genetically-engineered agriculture; 3) climate change, community genetics and phenotype management in designed and natural biotic communities; and 4) evolving impacts of biotic invasions on conservation, agriculture and natural resources. There is sufficient overlap of interests between the U.S. and Australian participants to indicate that they can successfully pursue the activities proposed and that the interaction will benefit both sides. This multidisciplinary exchange of ideas will likely produce a significant synthesis and development of new approaches to predict, prevent and manage evolutionary challenges. Evolutionary management holds the potential to sustain biodiversity, design organisms for medical and environmental remediation, and build novel communities to reduce pathogenesis and restore ecosystem functions and services. Results of the workshop will provide a forum for developing mutual frameworks for evolutionary problem-solving in the medical, agricultural and environmental sciences. Beneficiaries of these new approaches are federal, university and industrial scientists and policy-makers, as well as federal, state and industrial administrators and managers. The workshop will provide the U.S. postdocs and graduate students an excellent opportunity to receive a global research experience. It is anticipated that they will maintain contacts and collaborations with the Australian researchers and students throughout their careers. Information about the workshop and its findings will be made available via respective websites and will include white papers, abstracts, discussions and videos