Group Travel Support for the Symposium "Biogeography and Ecology - Two Lenses in One Telescope"; Herakleon, Crete; January 2011

The University Of Central Florida Board Of Trustees, Orlando FL

Investigators

Abstract

Ecology and biogeography are each large disciplines with different approaches: ecology tends to focus on local patterns and processes in nature, while biogeography focuses on large-scale, continental patterns and processes. Yet both disciplines share the overall goal to better understand natural biological systems. This project will support graduate students to attend and participate in a special symposium of the International Biogeography Society, entitled Biogeography and Ecology - Two Lenses in One Telescope. In this symposium, both ecologists and biogeographers will present analyses of four subjects of common interest to the two disciplines: niche, comparative ecology and macroecology, community assembly, and diversity. The symposium will be the first to explicitly bring together ecologists and biogeographers to critically review and discuss the intersection of the two disciplines, and will help steer future research in each of the merging disciplines. The symposium and resulting journal issue are timely and essential because regional and international research programs are increasingly common in response to large-scale problems at the interface between ecology and biogeography. Many of the environmental challenges, such as biodiversity conservation and climate change occur at regional scales, and will require that ecology and biogeography together guide science-based policies and decisions. Like the science of regional and large-scale questions, environmental management and regulatory efforts are also crossing borders and reaching to regional scales. More immediately, graduate students will be funded to attend the symposium and International Biogeography Society conference. Travel support for students will help launch students? careers and will have a strong influence on the future of research in ecological biogeography.