Meeting: New Frontiers from Marine Snakes to Marine Ecosystems, Charleston, SC January 4-7, 2012

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

A Symposium titled "New Frontiers from Marine Snakes to Marine Ecosystems" and an associated Workshop titled "Building Conceptual Bridges between Marine Snake Research and Challenging Frontiers in Biology" will be held during 3-7 January 2012 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Charleston, SC. The Symposium will feature 11 speakers with additional participants contributing to complementary oral and poster sessions and discussions at the Workshop. This meeting will reflect a breadth of involvement including diversity of age, gender, ethnicity, institutions, and international participation. The proposed Symposium, together with interactions during complementary sessions and the associated Workshop, will provide an important service for students and new research scientists by interpreting the significance of current research, promoting the integration of marine research, and highlighting some intriguing directions for future investigations. The breadth of the symposium, and the diverse interests of people who will come to it, presents unparalleled opportunities for integration of topics and promotion of future interdisciplinary research involving a variety of disciplines. Several interrelated goals of the Symposium are: (1) Bring together world?s experts who currently investigate the biology of marine snakes and their interactions with marine ecosystems in which they live (principally coral reefs). (2) Establish and promote the use of marine systems as models for investigating conceptual issues related to environment, changing climate, and persistence of biological communities. (3) Identify leading-edge topics for which studies of marine snakes might contribute uniquely to the advancement of research. Examples are: (i) understanding overall patterns of biodiversity in the Indo-Pacific; (ii) applying molecular approaches to advance understanding of evolutionary processes including diverse and prolific radiations; and (iii) better understanding the importance of bioindicators to health and conservation of coral reef ecosystems. (4) Summarize and evaluate current states of knowledge for various topics in a context of moving fields forward and promoting linkages to ongoing research. (5) Build collaborations among the various persons who will participate. Papers from the Symposium will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Integrative & Comparative Biology, and will be followed with publication of a book in the near future.