Conference: 50 Years of Interdisciplinary Research at the Duke Lemur Center: the power of biological infrastructure to advance knowledge

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

This project will support a combined workshop and symposium to commemorate fifty years of interdisciplinary biological research at the Duke Lemur Center (DLC), and also, to highlight and evaluate the uniquely powerful attributes of Living Stocks Collections for the scientific community. The DLC has impacted biological disciplines ranging from behavioral ecology to brain sciences, evolutionary ecology, microbial metagenomics, comparative genomics, biomechanics, One Health disease dynamics, aging and demography, biodiversity conservation, paleontology, climate change, comparative physiology, speciation genetics, sensory biology, and more. The DLC is truly a living laboratory for advancing science, scholarship, and biological conservation through interdisciplinary research, and over its 50-year history, thousands of students ranging from K-12 through postgraduate levels have been engaged in and inspired by their experiences at the DLC. Also, hundreds of thousands of visitors from the general public have been exposed to the concepts of biodiversity discovery and conservation, as well as the power of biological research via their exposure to the DLC's staff, students, and collections. Despite its resounding success, however, the DLC and other Living Stocks Collections face issues of long-term sustainability as foundational infrastructure for the basic sciences. The power and irreplaceable nature of these biological collections needs to be articulated such that all stakeholders understand the risks and needs for these national resources. As a follow-up to the U.S. Culture Collection Network hosted in October, 2015 at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, the DLC will host a working group meeting of Living Stocks Collection Managers on the afternoon of September 21, 2016. The working group will represent five of the leading Living Stock Centers, and given the phylogenetic breadth of the centers' foci (plants, fungi, insects, and mammals) the workshop will cover an enormous stretch of the Tree of Life, thus representing more than many hundreds of millions of years of evolution. The working group meeting will immediately precede the 50th-Anniversary Symposium to be hosted by the DLC. The Symposium to held on September 22-23, 2016 will focus specifically on disciplines relevant to the BIO Directorate, most especially Behavioral Systems, Climate Change, the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases, Evolutionary Processes, Systematics and Biodiversity, and Understanding the Brain. Meeting details and travel and lodging information will be communicated to attendees via the symposium website, http://lemur.duke.edu/50/; which is also set up to accept online registrations. In order to engage students and participants from smaller institutions, there will be a poster session held at the DLC on the evening of September 22, 2016. The DLC workshop and symposium is particularly notable for the strong representation of women in science with 51% of participants being women. Results from the Living Stocks Working Group will be compiled into a white paper document for which the participants will seek a publication venue that is broadly accessible to the biological community. All talks from the 50th Anniversary Symposium will be recorded and made publically available on the DLC's YouTube channel.