IBS

Lecturership in Biogeography and Biodiversity at Oxford

2009-10-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

We are currently advertising a permanent lectureship position to afforce our biodiversity/biogeography staffing in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. The deadline is 23rd October.

http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/news/jobs/090917.html

School of Geography and the Environment in association with Jesus College

University Lecturership in Biogeography and Biodiversity
Salary scale: £42,351 - £56,917
The School of Geography and the Environment seek applications for a full-time University Lecturership with expertise in biogeography and biodiversity. The Lecturership is tenable from 1st January 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter and will be held in conjunction with a Tutorial Fellowship at Jesus College.

The main duties of the post-holder will be to engage in research and produce high-quality publications of an international standard in the broad area of biogeography and/or biodiversity (which can include ecology, long-term ecology and conservation), to provide University teaching at graduate and undergraduate level, and to offer graduate supervision and assistance with examination duties. Other key duties include co-operating in the administrative work of the School.

The successful candidate will hold a doctorate in Geography or a closely related scientific field, have a proven track record of high-quality research and list of principal publications at an international level, as well as evidence of imaginative research plans and the potential to lead and manage new research initiatives. S/he should be able to demonstrate expertise relevant to appropriate areas of physical geography. Evidence of inter-disciplinary skills, the ability to teach at both undergraduate and graduate level, and the skills and commitment to become a fully participating member of the School are also essential.

The combined University and College salary will be on a scale up to £56,917.

Further information regarding Jesus College may be found on their website.

Candidates will be considered on the basis of the selection criteria outlined in the further particulars (see http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/news/jobs/090917.html). Alternatively contact the HR Office by email recruitment(at)ouce.ox.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0)1865 285079.

Frontiers of Biogeography vol 1 issue 1 is now available

2009-09-17T01:59:00.000-07:00

The inaugural issue of Frontiers of Biogeography — the scientific magazine of the International Biogeography Society (September 2009) is now freely available at http://www.biogeography.org/html/fb/FBv1i1.html

Table of contents:

editorial
Frontiers of Biogeography, a new frontier for the IBS, by J. Hortal & M. N Dawson
From the Foundations to the Frontiers of Biogeography, by L.R. Heaney & M. V. Lomolino

news and update
A finer focus on glacial refugia in the Mediterranean region, by A.S. Jump
Updated DIVA program, by J. Fjeldså
From acorns mighty micropockets grow, by L. Hannah
commentary: New insights on a classic topic: The biogeography of Southeast-Asian mammals, by J. Beck
commentary: The geographic consequences of climate change for migratory birds, by F.A. La Sorte
commentary: Towards an efficient management of biological invasions, by N. Roura-Pascual
book review: Science Chic, by M.N. Dawson
workshop summary: Biodiversity Synthesis meeting on the biogeography of Melanesia, by J. Drew

opinion and perspectives
perspective: Phylogeography is not enough: The need for multiple lines of evidence, by A.T. Peterson

profiles
conservation biogeography forum: Neil D. Burguess, interviewed by A. Ahrends
obituary: Professor Chris Humphries (1947—2009), by D. Williams

membership corner
IBS-sponsored events: Latest news from the forthcoming 2011 IBS meeting at Crete
Job announcements, Upcoming meetings

Frontiers of Biogeography is published by the International Biogeography Society. Editorial information, instructions for authors are available at http://www.biogeography.org/html/fb.html.

All future issues will be made available also at http://www.biogeography.org/html/fb.html.

Job Announcement: Postdoctoral positions and PhD studentships within 16 research themes

2009-09-17T01:35:00.000-07:00

Center of Macroecology, Evolution and Climate — Danish National Research Foundation — University of Copenhagen and Technical University of Denmark

Postdoctoral positions and PhD studentships in Macroecology, Biogeography, Evolution, Population Biology, Oceanographic Processes, Climate, Conservation Biology, and Environmental Economics

A number of positions are available to work within an integrated terrestrial and marine research program addressing fundamental questions on the origin, maintenance, conservation and future of life and biological diversity on Earth.

Candidates should have a strong publication record, relevant analytical and data handling skills, and an ability to communicate within a research team. Competitive salaries are offered.
Fuller descriptions of individual positions within 16 themes are at http://www.bio.ku.dk/om/jobs. Application must be based on the full description of the positions, and submitted before 31 of October. For enquiries about the program, contact Professor Carsten Rahbek, crahbek(at)bio.ku.dk.

Job Announcement: Full Professorships

2009-09-17T01:30:00.000-07:00

Utrecht University is a place of learning that offers many widely varying disciplines. Where different areas meet or overlap, the developments are particularly interesting. At Utrecht University science never stops. Nor will your development.
Utrecht University urgently seeks applicants who can easily identify with this open, dedicated and multidisciplinary culture. The Department of Biology (Faculty of Science) invites candidates to apply for the permanent positions of:

Full professor Ecology & Biodiversity
The chair in Ecology & Biodiversity is part of the Institute of Environmental Biology (IEB) and contributes to the University’s focus area ‘Earth and Sustainability'. The central theme of the IEB is 'Biological Mechanisms and Biodiversity in Relation to Climate Change'. This chair is one of the few that has biodiversity as the central object of study, integrating its regulation and its consequences. As full professor, you will direct a research group and a scientific program in the field of plant ecology and biodiversity. In particular, you will focus on the up-scaling of ecological processes with an innovative combination of theoretical and empirical studies.
For additional information, please contact the Chairman of the Appointment Committee: Prof Dr A.F. Lotter, e-mail: a.f.lotter(at)uu.nl, tel. +31 30 253 2629 (secretary)

Full professor Cellular Dynamics
The new chair of Cellular Dynamics is positioned in the Institute of Biocomplexity and Bioinformatics and in the University’s focus area ‘Life Sciences & Biocomplexity’, which harbours groups with strong expertise in cell biology, live imaging, molecular genetics, bioinformatics, and computational modelling. This focus area strives to integrate structural biology, dynamic data acquisition in model organisms and computational biology in order to unravel basic principles of
biological networks. As full professor, you will direct a research group and scientific program in the field of Cellular Dynamics.
For additional information, please contact the Chairman of the Search Committee: Prof Dr Ben Scheres, e-mail: B.Scheres(at)uu.nl, telephone +31 30 253 3133 or +31 30 253 4230.

Qualifications
Candidates must have a PhD and an excellent track record in the desired field of research and proven ability to obtain extramural funding for research and contribute to, and provide leadership in collaborative research programs. You have experience and enthusiasm for teaching and student supervision as well as experience and leadership in shaping the curriculum and further development of programs at the BSc, Msc, and PhD level. You play an active role in leading (national and international) activities in the area of the chair and/or social
communities.
We offer a permanent position as full professor at 1,0 fte. The gross salary ranges between € 4,904.- and € 7,142.- per month.
The deadline for applications is 22 September 2009.
Please visit www.uu.nl/vacancies for the complete job descriptions

Frontiers of Biogeography is out!

2009-09-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

The inaugural issue of Frontiers of Biogeography — the scientific magazine of the International Biogeography Society is published today. Downloads available at http://www.biogeography.org/html/fb.html (whole issue) http://www.biogeography.org/html/fb/FBv1i1.html (individual articles)

Discounts at UC Press

2009-09-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

UC Press is currently offering discounts to people living and purchasing in the US, including titles such as the "Encyclopedia of Islands" (available at almost 1/2 its retail price) and other UC Press titles (discounted up to 70%). go.ucpress.edu/bigsale. Please use discount code 10M9352

If you like this or other UC Press biogeography titles but are not living/buying in the US, let us know (blog here, or better still tweet at http://twitter.com/Biogeography) and we'll try to arrange discounts for the 2011 meeting.

Job announcement: 2-year postdoc project

2009-09-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

Ecoinformatics & Biodiversity Group, Department of Biological Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
Supervisor: Professor Jens-Christian Svenning
Topic: What determines the global patterns of palm species diversity?

The postdoc candidate is expected to provide cutting-edge expertise in macroecological analyses and to have strong collaborative skills. Applicants should preferably have a PhD degree from a university outside Denmark.

Salary depends on seniority as agreed between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Confederation of Professional Union, but is expected to be in the vicinity of 520.000 DKK ~ 69.000 Euros per year (before tax).

The position is officially announced at http://science.au.dk/en/positions-and-fellowships/academic-positions/, where you will also find a link to the online application facility. The application deadline is October 19, 2009. If you apply, please also send an email to Professor Jens-Christian Svenning (svenning(at)biology.au.dk).

2009-08-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

Bite-size biogeography at
https://twitter.com/biogeography

Chris Humphries

2009-08-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

It is our sad task to record the death of Professor Chris Humphries, merit researcher in the Botany Department (of the Natural History Museum, London) until his retirement in 2007, on Friday 31 July. Chris was a leading figure in the cladistic revolution in systematics and biogeography. Without his tireless efforts, systematic botany – perhaps systematic biology – would be a very different beast.

Chris joined the Botany Department in 1972 as an assistant curator, a nearly-finished PhD student, coming directly from Vernon Heywood’s Botany Department in Reading University. With the exception of three sabbaticals – two of them at the University of Melbourne (1979–80, 1986) and a six month stay as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute forAdvanced Study, Berlin) in 1994 – Chris spent his entire career in the Museum.

Chris’s early botanical research was on Asteraceae (daisies) and Macaronesia but during the 1970s and 1980s most of his intellectual effort went into developing, exploring and promoting cladistic systematics and cladistic biogeography. These efforts yielded two much acclaimed books: Cladistic Biogeography (1986) (with Lynne Parenti, of the Smithsonian; a revised 2nd edition appeared in 1999) for biogeography, and Cladistics: A practical course in systematics (1992) (with staff of the Natural History Museum; a revised 2nd edition appeared in 1998 as Cladistics: the theory and practice of parsimony analysis). Both books became standard works in their field.

Chris’s interest in art made him the perfect choice for organising and annotating the first complete full-colour edition of Banks’ Florilegium, published between 1980 and 1990. The project marked the beginning of Chris’s love affair with Australia and her flora, the enigmatic southern beeches and the problems of explaining organism distribution in the Southern Hemisphere. The Florilegium consists of over 700 botanical line engravings made from Sydney Parkinson’s watercolours, recording the plants collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Carl Solander on Captain James Cook’s first voyage around the world (1768-1771).

After 1990, Chris (with Dick Vane-Wright and Paul Williams, both of the Entomology Department) put biogeographical matters to more practical use, addressing what they called the 'Agony of Choice' – the conservationists’ dilemma – with their ‘WorldMap’ approach to conservation biology, combining taxonomic, ecological and biogeographic information into one system. After a decade of collaboration with many different and diverse groups of researchers working on many different organisms, Chris returned to more fundamental matters in biogeographical investigation and to the distribution of plants on Macaronesia, the islands he began with as a student.

During his career, Chris received many honours; the Linnean Society’s Bicentenary Medal in 1980 and their Gold Medal in 2001; he was also an Honorary Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was President of the Systematics Association (2001-2003) as well as its Treasurer (1996-99), and President of the Willi Hennig Society (1989-1991), being elected a Fellow honoris causa in 1998. Chris was also Vice-President and Botanical Secretary of the Linnean Society (1994-1998).

In 2008, a three-day Meeting was held in his honour at the Linnean Society; a Festschrift will be published in early 2010.

David Williams and Charlie Jarvis

Image: courtesy Dick Vane-Wright

note from Miguel Araújo: Chris was a good friend, and a founder member of the IBS (International Biogeography Society).

Science Officer Position at DIVERSITAS International Headquarters

2009-07-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

DIVERSITAS (www.diversitas-international.org), the international biodiversity science programme, is seeking a Science Officer for its International Secretariat located in Paris, to lead the implementation of its bioDISCOVERY core project on “Assessing, monitoring and predicting biodiversity change”.

We are looking for a highly motivated individual committed to an inter-disciplinary approach to biodiversity science. The position is ideal for a person interested in science, policy and scientific administration.

Required: Ph.D. and experience in a biodiversity related field. Excellent interpersonal abilities. Excellent English skills are required; French language skills are a plus.

Duties include:

1) Synthetic scientific activities such as writing overview articles, editing books;

2) Management activities such as organising and leading workshops; liaising with international conventions; fund raising.

Employers are CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and DIVERSITAS

Position starts late 2009. Appointment is for one year, renewable. Salary is commensurate with experience.

Applications (CV and three references) by 15 September and Inquiries via email to Dr. A. Larigauderie: secretariat@diversitas-international.org

More information on DIVERSITAS at: www.diversitas-international.org

2009-07-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

POSITION AVAILABLE: IBS Administrative Assistant

The job will be based at the University of Wisconsin Madison, is a 25% part-time position, and has a lot of flexibility for someone interested in working at home or looking for part-time work. Applicants with an undergraduate degree in biology, ecology, and geography are particularly encouraged to apply. Applications are due by August 14, and we hope to have someone starting by September 8.

Full details are available at the following URL:
http://www.ohr.wisc.edu/WebListing/Classified/PDSummary.aspx?vacid=73297&title=16660&tranType=LTEGRID

2009-06-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hey IBS members!
The call for nominations for the Alfred Russel Wallace award will close on 1st July. Less than a week left to recognize a lifetime of outstanding contributions to biogeography. Please propose a titan from your subdiscipline! Please submit preliminary nominations (which consist of a letter endorsing the candidate with an abbreviated copy of their curriculum vitae) to Felisa Smith fasmith@unm.edu.

IBS Newsletter changes its face: Frontiers of Biogeography

2009-05-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

As part of the development strategy for the IBS, the Newsletter is changing to a new format, and will be gradually changing contents during the forthcoming years.

The first of these changes is a change in name. From now on, the official online publication of the IBS will be:

Frontiers of Biogeography
The scientific magazine of the International Biogeography Society
ISSN 1948-6596

The first issue of the new journal is expected to appear in August, and you will be able to find it at http://www.biogeography.org/.

The editors

IBS Awards: Call for Nominations for the Alfred Russel Wallace Award

2009-05-21T03:11:00.000-07:00

The ARW award was established by the International Biogeography Society (IBS) in 2004 to recognize a lifetime of outstanding contributions by an eminent scholar in any subdiscipline of biogeography. Previous recipients have included Drs. Jack Briggs, Jared Diamond and John Avise. Preliminary nominations consist of a letter endorsing the candidate with an abbreviated copy of their curriculum vitae. The committee reviews these materials and solicits complete nomination packets (consisting of the letter of nomination, a complete CV, and three or more letters of recommendation) for selected individuals. The selected recipient will be invited to address the society at its next biennial meeting.

We are now in the process of accepting nominations for the 2011 award. Please forward preliminary nominations to Felisa Smith (fasmith(at)unm.edu), chair of the Awards Committee, by July 1, 2009.

2009-03-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

The University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, Alaska is hiring a Research Analyst in geospatial modeling, biogeography, and ecology. The analyst will assist with a several research projects including species distribution modeling as part of the Alaska GAP Analysis Project, modeling ship-strike risks to whales, landscape-genetics modeling, wildlife occupancy modeling, and model of ecological changes in deglaciated landscapes. This is a non-permanent position renewable on 1-year terms, full time, pays approximately $46,030 per annum (minimal benefits only), and begins approximately July 1, 2009. Candidates should have advanced analytical level experience, quantitative analysis skills, and relevant training and academic background (M.S.). To apply or seek more info, contact Sanjay Pyare sanjay.pyare@uas.alaska.edu 907‐796‐6007. Open until filled (job posting date 03/27/2009)

2009-01-13T09:41:00.000-08:00

If you didn't get chance to meet everyone you wanted at the meeting in Merida, remember the "International Biogeography Society" on facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6908354463

Interview with Werner Schroeder, Head of Africa Working Group, Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU)

2008-11-02T02:11:00.000-08:00

Werner Schroeder’s passion for international bird conservation stems from many travels to biodiverse areas in Africa. From 1983-1988 he studied biology and since then worked as an environmental consultant to a municipality close to Bielefeld, Germany. Since 1992 Werner Schroeder has been working in an honorary capacity as the Head of the Africa Working Group of NABU, the German BirdLife partner. Mainly focusing on Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, his work involves the coordination of support to local BirdLife International partners and the joint implementation of conservation programmes, including ecotourism, environmental education, alternative income generating activities and integrated conservation and development projects.

Relevance of biogeography to your work

Antje Ahrends. Is biogeography – “the study of the geography of life” – a relevant discipline to your work for NABU, the German BirdLife partner? Do you think it is relevant to practical conservation planning in general?
Werner Schroeder. I think that in general biogeography is of great relevance to conservation, in particular with respect to providing knowledge about the distribution of conservation target species across and within priority areas. NABU is basing its work on existing conservation models, primarily on the Important and Endemic Bird Area scheme developed by BirdLife International and to a lesser extent Conservation International’s biodiversity hotspots and WWF’s Global 200. These schemes are easily accessible and provide us with data relevant to conservation. If biogeographers have any further suggestions as to how to prioritise our work these are welcome. There certainly is a lack of communication.

AA. Do you read biogeographic journals, or otherwise receive information on new findings in the field of biogeography? What are your main sources for this?
WS. I read Oryx and Bird Conservation International on a regular basis but no biogeographic journals. Having said this, I am certainly interested in biogeographic research papers if they provide information on the species that we are trying to conserve. As such, a recently published study predicting the habitat suitability of the endemic Mountain Nyala in Ethiopia was of great interest to us. I can see that there is a divide between academia and practical conservation. Working in conservation I just do not have the time to get to grips with all the specifics of and engage in academic discussions.

AA. Does NABU collaborate with biogeographic research institutions?
WS. The NABU Africa Working Group does not collaborate with any biogeograhic research institutions.

The general practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation work

AA. Most species are difficult to monitor due to the lack of data. Do you believe that quantitative biogeographic methods (e.g. species distribution modelling) are useful to fill in these gaps, for example for the design of reserve networks or to establish the vulnerability of species to environmental change? Or do you think that given that these methods are inherently uncertain, it is difficult, if not risky, to allow them to guide conservation planning?
WS. Distribution modelling techniques and related methods would certainly be useful to inform conservation planning. However, it is important that the models are empirically tested and ground truthed to the greatest possible extent in order to know whether their assumptions and predictions are realistic. Furthermore, it would be useful if these methods would be reasonably easily accessible for non-specialists. BirdLife International African Partnership is recently working on o two year's project "Conservation in the face of climate change together with RSPB (UK) and Durhan University (UK) to develop a practical framework by using models to assess the possible impact of climate change on bird distribution. This information will be used to check whether IBAs in Africa will still meet their purpose for bird conservation.

Barbet, Kenya. Picture by Werner Schroeder

AA. Existing prioritisation schemes such as biodiversity hotspots, Global 200, or Important and Endemic Bird Areas necessarily suffer from data inadequacies, and also reflect the interests and values of the NGOs that generated them. Is there a need for objective reviews of the merits of these schemes, and alternative scenarios? Or do you think these schemes are so institutionalised that reviews would confuse decision makers, compromise public and financial support for conservation and therefore ultimately be counter-productive?
WS. There already have been studies on the overlap between the different schemes. I understand that a coarse agreement has been found, suggesting that where diversity is high in one taxonomic group it is likely to be high in other taxonomic groups too. However, I am certainly of the opinion that we should humbly revise our conservation prioritisation schemes when new data or methods suggest that we have been going wrong. I do not think that conservationists will lose face by doing so, and there is certainly no reason to quarrel over this. On the contrary, it is helpful to have these corrections. On the other hand, it is of course important not to come across as implausible to the public and politicians. We need to present them with data that is as sound as however possible. Given the rapid loss of species and habitats it is absolutely necessary that we all work together in this. We are already entirely and with increasing speed on the loser side and we cannot effort to engage in unhelpful quarrels. Allowing our decisions to be influenced by concurrence between organisations or the run for high profile publications is unethical.
At NABU we base our work on the prioritisation scheme suggested by BirdLife International. The rationale for doing so is that (1) it is probably not helpful if everybody developed their own prioritisation scheme, and (2) for me as a conservation practitioner time is too scarce to engage in the all the specifics of this often rather academic debate. Having said this, it would be useful if datasets on species and their distributions and alternative suggestions for prioritisations would be made available and easily accessible (!) to the conservation community in order for us to review our focal areas on a regular basis.

AA. Do you think that idealistic prioritisation schemes have much relevance on the ground (other than attracting funding)? I.e. is it useful to have these benchmarks although they are (1) necessarily based on incomplete data and (2) generally do not take into account political or socioeconomic constraints?
WS. The Important Bird Area (IBA) scheme by BirdLife International does also take socio-economic aspects into account. In over 190 IBAs so called “Site Support Groups” (SSGs) have been formed by members of the adjacent local communities who have economic and other benefits from the conservation of their sites. The collection of socio-economic and biological data is routinely done for all these sites by trained SSG members, and the data collected is far more extensive than could ever be provided by biologists or the government. To your question: albeit idealistic, I think it is important to have a prioritisation as a form of orientation. Particularly in Endemic Bird Areas it is very important to immediately establish contact to people on the ground, to identify potential socio-economic issues conflicting with the sites’ conservation and to find a solution. If in the end it turned out that an area was not as important to biodiversity conservation as previously thought, it would not be the end of the world if this area was sustainably managed, would it? To me, this seems to be a rather theoretical debate. Every area that harbours biological diversity harbours also ecosystem services and is important. Also, realistically, 99% of the areas that now seem “less important” will have lost their importance due to anthropogenic influences. I would not hesitate to communicate this to the public. In order to prevent the opposite scenario – that an important area has been overlooked by the prioritisation exercises – it is important that conservation and biogeographers work hand in hand. In fact, I would wish for a closer collaboration with biogeographers in our Africa work and herewith like to invite biogeographers to visit/study our project areas.

AA. The nature of scientific research is to continuously challenge existing paradigms, and as a consequence there frequently is a lot of disagreement and a rapid-turnover of paradigms. For instance, a predictive model for species distributions that was deemed the state of the art a few years ago might already be regarded as flawed today! Does this scientific rationale make it difficult to include biogeographic findings in conservation practice given that conservation generally needs longer term strategies and commitments?
WS. I do not think at all that this is a problem. It is helpful to have disagreements that further the debate and our work should be flexible enough to incorporate reviews and corrections.

Crablover, Kenya. Picture by Werner Schroeder

Communication between biogeographers and conservation practitioners

AA. Do you think that biogeographers communicate the applicability of their research findings to conservationists adequately? And vice versa, do conservationists adequately communicate their information needs to biogeographers?
WS. I think that there is too little communication between biogeographers and conservationists. Before agreeing to participate in this interview, I was not even sure what exactly falls within the scope of biogeography . The word “geography” sounds purely geographic orientated and not relevant to species conservation. I did not see the immediate relevance of biogeography to conservation.

AA. Is an intensified exchange between conservationists and biogeographers necessary, and if so, where do you see potential platforms for this?
WS. It would be very helpful if biogeographers were present at conservation meetings and conferences. I could imagine that such a contribution would be very welcome at BirdLife Regional Partnership meetings or meetings of the German Society for Ornithology. I would welcome a course organised by biogeographers on how to use the software they are developing to look at the probability of species’ occurrence in the face of climate change, and I would be interested in a collaboration to test the accuracy of these models using bird data.

AA. And vice versa - would you be interested to join us at the annual meeting of the IBS?
WS. To be honest, I fear that many of the symposia will be so specific that I would not get a lot out of them. I am more interested in the interdisciplinary work between biogeography and conservation. A pure biogeography meeting would only be useful for me to attend if their was a symposium on the biogeography link to conservation or on particular geographic areas or species that fall within the scope of my work for NABU.

Any further thoughts you would like to share:

WS. I think that it would be extremely helpful if the outputs of species distribution models would be readily available to conservation practitioners on CDs or the internet, for example in order to identify sites with a high probability of occurrence of particular species that we are trying to conserve. I am sure that there is a lot of information out there in the form of peer-reviewed publications, however, as mentioned before I lack the time to go through these in detail and not working in an academic institution I also do not have free access to the majority of the relevant journals.

Interview with Philip Platts, Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher, University of York, UK

2008-11-02T02:05:00.000-08:00

Philip is currently studying for a Ph.D. at the York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Dynamics (KITE). With a background in ecological mathematics, his research is now focused on the understanding of the spatial patterns of forest dynamics in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and Kenya.

Relevance of biogeography to conservation

Antje Ahrends. Do you think that biogeography has important implications for conservation in practice? Do you agree with Whittaker et al. 2005 (Conservation Biogeography: assessment and prospect. Diversity and Distributions 11: 3-23) that conservation biogeography should be regarded and consolidated as a sub-discipline of conservation science?
Philip Platts. An understanding of biogeography and spatial processes in general is fundamental for effective conservation. As a mathematician by training, I am fortunate to work alongside ecologists, geneticists and economists, as well as those involved in advising on policy. I think that collaboration across disciplines is the way forward, rather than debating the headings under which specific lines of research would best be placed.

AA. Do you read conservation journals, or otherwise receive information on new developments in conservation practice/policy?
PP. My core reading is generally of modelling techniques and applications, though the thread of citations lands me amidst the conservation literature from time to time. When discussing the implications of my modelling work for conservation I read more widely and seek the advice of those with backgrounds in conservation.

AA. Do you think that biogeographers should contribute to conservation in practice, or should research be entirely free of political agendas? Does your research help conservation in practice? Which stakeholder groups are benefiting from your research, and how do you communicate your findings?
PP. I think most would agree that the life sciences should be focussed solely on furthering our understanding of the natural world, without getting caught up in political whims. In practice though, I suspect that research funding and thus publications are to some extent influenced by political trends. At KITE we work in collaboration with East African institutions, and believe that the advancement of African science itself will pay dividends for effective conservation management in the region. We discuss our research with Tanzanian stakeholders, and present our findings both locally in Tanzania, and internationally via journals and conferences.

The general practicality of incorporating new biogeographic findings in conservation work

AA. It is still uncertain to which degree predictive species models are applicable at a local scale. Also, there are necessarily a lot of uncertainties associated with the predictions at all scales. Do you think that the results of these models should nevertheless be communicated to conservation practitioners and potentially influence management decisions? Is there a risk that the validity of these models is over-estimated?
PP. There is a risk, yes. Models, by definition, are not perfect representations of reality, but rather tools for investigating specific aspects of a system. It is up to scientists to communicate their findings clearly and objectively in the literature, but it is the responsibility of conservation practitioners to utilise the clues that models provide responsibly and with the appropriate degree of caution.
AA. Implementing conservation strategies is partly reliant on the support of the public and decision makers. The communication of uncertainty or conflicting messages can be difficult. Do you feel that this aspect of conservation hampers the integration of newer research findings? Do you generally perceive a gap between biogeography science and conservation policy?
PP. I don’t know whether or not this hampers the integration of new research. It shouldn’t. The way in which uncertainty and ongoing scientific debate ought to be communicated for political and/or conservational ends is not something I feel qualified to comment on.

AA. Conservation planning needs long-term strategies. Do you perceive a gap between the comparatively rapid development and sophistication of tools such as species distribution models in science and their acceptance in the conservation world?
PP. Probably there is, yes, though I think it’s debatable whether or not this should be considered a bad thing. Techniques for estimating species distributions are developing quickly, and receive their fair share of criticism (and praise). One the one hand, the lag between scientific advances and their acceptance in conservation allows time for their validity to be challenged and defended – an important process that ultimately increases their worth. On the other, conservationists and policymakers must utilise all the knowledge and resources at their disposal if the world’s ecosystems are to be properly conserved and managed.
Model design requires an idea of how the underlying processes function, empirical and experimental data, and of course the guidance of experts in the relevant fields. Criticising simple distribution models for, say, omitting community interactions is sort of missing the point in my view: just because a model can’t tell us everything, that’s not to say it can’t tell us anything.

Student and Post-Doc Travel Grants - International Biogeography Society

2008-10-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

The International Biogeography Society is awarding travel grants for students and post-docs to attend the 2009 biennial meeting, which will be held January 8-12, 2009 in Merida, Mexico. The U.S. National Science Foundation has provided a large grant to IBS that will pay for several dozen young scientists from U.S.-based institutions to attend the meeting. Applicants awarded these grants will still need to pay meeting registration costs, but most other expenses, such as airfare, hotel costs, and food, will be supported =96 up to a maximum of $1,300 per award recipient. IBS will also provide a limited number of travel grants for students based outside the U.S. These grants will award a maximum of $800 per award participant. All grants will be awarded to graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and post-docs giving oral or poster presentations at the meeting.

Each applicant will need to submit an application along with an electronic letter of recommendation from a non-student member of IBS. Application instructions can be found here.

Applications and supporting materials are due by October 31st, 2008. Grant recipients will be notified by November 15th, 2008.

Please contact Matt Heard with any questions.

Matthew Heard
Brown University
Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Box G-W
Providence, RI 02912
heard.m(at)gmail.com
401-863-2789
heard.m.googlepages.com

Hypothesis testing, curve fitting, and data mining in macroecology

2008-10-25T03:12:00.001-07:00

Nicholas J. Gotelli
Department of Biology, University of Vermont.
e-mail: Nicholas.Gotelli(at)uvm.edu

Changes in technology and methodology can have a big influence on how we do science. In this essay, I will discuss how new methods for the acquisition and analysis of data have affected biogeography and macroecology.

The underlying data used by macroecologists are geo-referenced specimen collections (GBIF 2008). For many decades, biogeographers explored the globe to collect and catalog these kinds of data (e.g. Darlington 1957). The numbers, usually counts of species or maps of geographic ranges, were plotted in simple graphs and used in support of narrative explanations and historical accounts of the patterns. Explicit hypothesis-testing was rare, although pioneering analyses of taxonomic diversity indices by C.B. Williams and other European ecologists (Järvinen 1982) foreshadowed the statistical perspective that would begin to dominate ecology and biogeography in the 1970s (Gotelli and Graves 1996).

Today, the widespread availability of compiled data sets on the internet means that young scientists can begin successful careers in macroecology without ever going in the field to collect data themselves. Of course, since most of the earth’s biota has not even been described taxonomically (May 1995) – much less mapped biogeographically – there is still a great deal of primary data collecting to do. But even some of this activity may become automated, with the most promising avenue being the mapping of vegetation through the use of remote sensing and satellite imagery (Gillespie et al. 2008).

With less emphasis on data collection, more energy has gone into statistical analysis and interpretation. Sophisticated methods such as spatial regression analysis (Lichstein et al. 2002) have been used to compare patterns in multiple data sets and address long-standing hypotheses about the origin and maintenance of the latitudinal gradient in species richness (Rohde 1992, Willig et al. 2003). An entire subdiscipline of bioclimatic niche modeling has emerged as macroecologists have used species occurrence data to predict how biotas will respond to global climate change (Elith et al. 2006).

In spite of this statistical sophistication, macroecologists still have not achieved a satisfactory understanding of global patterns of species diversity (Currie et al. 2004), nor have they developed trustworthy tools for forecasting future biotic change (Araújo and Rahbek 2006). In fact, the published conclusions still sound an awful lot like the narratives of the early biogeographers! But instead of making these arguments on the basis of simple species richness plots, macroecologists make them on the size of the p-values or the correlation coefficients from their regression models.

There are two related problems here, one with the hypotheses and the other with the statistical methods. For the most part, hypotheses in macroecology are just verbal descriptions of mechanisms (“higher productivity in the tropics allows for more biodiversity”). But since multiple explanations can generate the same qualitative patterns (“greater temperature stability in the tropics allows for more biodiversity”), we are not going to easily distinguish these mechanisms through qualitative assessment of correlations alone.

In this regard, I think the most important recent breakthrough in macroecology has been the development of metabolic theory (Allen et al. 2002). This theory, derived from first principles that do not depend in a circular way on existing data, predicts a quantitative relationship between temperature and biodiversity. Instead of just testing a null hypothesis of a slope of zero, we can now test whether observed slopes (with appropriate transformations) deviate from -0.65, the predicted value from the model (Hawkins et al. 2007). Controversy over the empirical support for metabolic theory (Hawkins et al. 2007, Gillooly and Allen 2007) should not obscure its importance: metabolic theory makes quantitative, not just qualitative, predictions and that is what we need right now in macroecology.

Theoreticians should step up to the plate and develop quantitative theories for other hypotheses in macroecology. As recently proposed by O’Brien (2006), the water-energy model may provide an emerging framework that will generate functional forms for water and energy variables derived from first principles of physiology and physical constraints imposed by the energetics of liquid water. For now, however, these models are either entirely verbal (Vetaas 2006), or they are derived from fitted regression functions that are specific to particular taxa, spatial scales, and continents (O’Brien 1998).

In addition to the development of new theory, we need to move beyond analytical methods that simply fit curves to data and test patterns against simple statistical null hypotheses. Some macroecologists are beginning to develop stochastic simulation models that include explicit algorithms for the origin, spread, and extinction of species in a bounded geographic domain (e.g. Storch et al. 2006, Rahbek et al. 2007, Rangel et al. 2007) These mechanistic simulation models (Grimm et al. 2005) have their roots in the mid-domain effect (Colwell and Lees 2000), a pleasingly simple explanation for species richness gradients that emerged from the random placement of contiguous species ranges in a bounded domain. This kind of modeling exercise raises its own challenges: how do we empirically estimate model parameters, and how do we explore the behavior of such a model over a potentially very large parameter space? But this simulation approach may allow macroecology to move beyond statistical correlations, and can serve as a nice complement to theoretical investigations. Simulation models may even provide quantitative predictions in cases where the mathematical models do not have a tractable analytic solution.

In a provocative essay in Wired magazine, Anderson (2008) speculates that one day traditional hypothesis testing will be unnecessary. Some data-mining enthusiasts believe that, with enough data, correlations will reveal mechanisms in comprehensive statistical models that encompass all possible data. I think the data miners are probably right. Exciting new work in computer science has led to very sophisticated “reverse-engineering” algorithms that have great promise for uncovering the functional form of relationships among correlated variables. These new iterative methods use data partitioning, automated probing, and snipping to sequentially modify and test underlying nonlinear functions with data-rich time series.

For example, Bongaard and Lipson (2007) successfully recovered the functional form of the movement of a pendulum using as input the temporal series of spatial coordinates of a swinging pendulum. Their algorithm repeatedly “sampled” the data set from the most critical regions (where the pendulum was changing direction) and iteratively arrived successfully at the correct equations for motion.

Interestingly, the same methods were not so successful when applied to the famous ecological time series of snowshoe hare and Canadian lynx populations (Elton and Nicholson 1942). The algorithm did generate a pair of coupled differential equations (Bongaard and Lipson 2007). However, we know that the hare-lynx cycle is not caused entirely by coupled predator-prey interactions.

The problem, of course, is not the algorithm, but the limited data that it was fed. The time series of pelt records from the Hudson Bay Company does not reveal the critical observations of hare populations on islands in eastern Canada that cycle in the absence of the lynx (Keith 1963). The analysis also did not include time series on the secondary plant compounds in tundra vegetation, which accumulate under intense grazing and may be ultimately responsible for endogenous cycles of the hare (Keith 1983). And the model did not include time-series on snowpack depth or solar sunspot activity, both of which probably contribute to the regional synchrony of hare lynx cycles (Sinclair et al. 1993).

Without such “expert knowledge” it is easy to understand why the model failed. If those data inputs were provided, I think it is very likely the model would reveal the correct functional form of the relationships among hare, lynx, vegetation, and climate. But for now, the use of passive machine-learning algorithms applied to large data sets is an inefficient way to test hypotheses and make progress in macroecology. And given the pressing need to understand how biotas will respond to climate change, I am not sure we have the luxury of waiting for these comprehensive data sets to accumulate.

Nevertheless, the paradigm of machine learning seems to be the direction that much of the bioclimatic niche modeling research is going. If the goal of this research is to understand how biotas will shift in response to climate change, I think it is going to be much more fruitful if we combine it with an experimental approach. Experimental translocation of individuals beyond their current range boundaries (Hellmann et al. 2008) and experimental manipulations of abiotic variables to mimic effects of climate change on populations and communities (Harte and Shaw 1995, Suttle et al. 1997) are very powerful approaches. Experiments can provide realistic parameter estimates for bioclimatic niche models. Even simple models that are supported by experimental data will probably be more trustworthy than sophisticated models that are not.

In sum, the availability of large data bases, the emergence of quantitative predictive theories, and the development of new computational tools and simulation methods make this an exciting time to be studying macroecology. There are pressing applied problems of global climate change that we can address with these new tools and data. And along the way, perhaps we will even answer some unresolved questions in biogeography about species richness gradients.

Acknowledgements
This essay was inspired by the work of the Synthetic Macroecological Models of Species Diversity Working Group supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a Center funded by NSF (Grant #DEB-0553768), the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the State of California.

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Anderson, C. 2008. The end of theory: the data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete. Wired Magazine 16.07. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory
Araújo, M. B., and C. Rahbek. 2006. How does climate change affect biodiversity? Science 313: 1396-1397.
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Elton, C. and M. Nicholson. 1942. The ten-year cycle in numbers of the lynx in Canada. Journal of Animal Ecology 11: 215-244.
Gillespie, T. W., G. M. Foody, D. Rocchini, A. P. Giorgi, and S. Saatchi. 2008. Measuring and modelling biodiversity from space. Progress in Physical Geography 32:203-221.
Gillooly, J. F. and A. P. Allen. 2007. Linking global patterns in biodiversity to evolutionary dynamics using metabolic theory. Ecology 88:1890-1894.
GBIF, Global Biodiversity Information Facility. 2008. http://www.gbif.org/press/factsheet
Gotelli, N.J. and G.R. Graves. 1996. Null Models in Ecology. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.
Grimm, V., E. Revilla, U. Berger, F. Jeltsch, W. M. Mooij, S. F. Railsback, H. H. Thulke, J. Weiner, T. Wiegand, and D. L. DeAngelis. 2005. Pattern-oriented modeling of agent-based complex systems: Lessons from ecology. Science 310:987-991.
Harte, J. and R. Shaw. 1995. Shifting dominance within a montane vegetation community- results of a climate-warming experiment. Science 267: 876-880.
Hawkins, B. A., F. S. Albuquerque, M. B. Araujo, J. Beck, L. M. Bini, F. J. Cabrero-Sanudo, I. Castro-Parga, J. A. F. Diniz, D. Ferrer-Castan, R. Field, J. F. Gomez, J. Hortal, J. T. Kerr, I. J. Kitching, J. L. Leon-Cortes, J. M. Lobo, D. Montoya, J. C. Moreno, M. A. Olalla-Tarraga, J. G. Pausas, H. Qian, C. Rahbek, M. A. Rodriguez, N. J. Sanders, and P. Williams. 2007. A global evaluation of metabolic theory as an explanation for terrestrial species richness gradients. Ecology 88:1877-1888.
Hellmann, J. J., S. L. Pelini, K. M. Prior, and J. D. K. Dzurisin. 2008. The response of two butterfly species to climatic variation at the edge of their range and the implications for poleward range shifts. Oecologia 157:583-592.
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O’Brien, E.M. 1998. Water energy dynamics, climate and prediction of woody plant species richness: an Interim General Model. Journal of Biogeography, 25, 379-398.
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Rahbek, C., N. J. Gotelli, R. K. Colwell, G. L. Entsminger, T. Rangel, and G. R. Graves. 2007. Predicting continental-scale patterns of bird species richness with spatially explicit models. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 274:165-174.
Rangel, T.F.L.V.B., Diniz-Filho, J.A.F., & Colwell, R.K. 2007. Species richness and evolutionary niche dynamics: a spatial pattern-oriented simulation experiment. American Naturalist 170: 602-616.
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Sinclair, A.R.E., J.M. Gosline, G. Holdsworth, C.J. Krebs, S. Boutin, J.N.M. Smith, R. Boonstra, and M. Dale. 1993. Can the solar cycle and climate synchronize the snowshoe hare cycle in Canada? Evidence from tree rings and ice cores. The American Naturalist 141: 173-198.
Storch, D., R. G. Davies, S. Zajicek, C. D. L. Orme, V. Olson, G. H. Thomas, T. S. Ding, P. C. Rasmussen, R. S. Ridgely, P. M. Bennett, T. M. Blackburn, I. P. F. Owens, and K. J. Gaston. 2006. Energy, range dynamics and global species richness patterns: reconciling mid-domain effects and environmental determinants of avian diversity. Ecology Letters 9:1308-1320.
Suttle, K. B., M. A. Thomsen, and M. E. Power. 2007. Species interactions reverse grassland responses to changing climate. Science 315:640-642.
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Azorean arthropods do it fast in dark caves

2008-10-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

Azorean arthropods have diversified according to the age, area and relative isolation of each island within the archipelago. However, each group experiences these factors differently; hence their patterns of diversification differ according to their particular life histories. This is the main finding of a study conducted by Joaquín Hortal from the NERC Centre of Population Biology of the Imperial College, and Paulo Borges from the Azorean Biodiversity Group (CITA-A) of the University of the Azores, recently published in the Journal of Biogeography. The authors show that although the shape of the relationship between diversification and time is in general the same, different groups show different rhythms of evolution. They reach these conclusions within the first independent evaluation of the General Dynamic Model of Oceanic Island Biogeography, recently proposed by Robert J. Whittaker and colleagues, which merges the geological evolution of islands with the biological evolution happening on them. Borges and Hortal used the framework provided by this new model to study the relationship between the number of species that are single island endemics (i.e., exclusive of each island) and the age, area and isolation of each island.

'Caldeira' of Corvo, the smallest island of the Azores

Within the Azores, cave species appear to have evolved quite quickly, producing a number of species during the initial stages of development of the islands, when cave systems formed by lava tubes and volcanic pits were abundant and pristine due to the high volcanic activity. When the islands settle, cave systems start to collapse, diminishing the area available for cavernicolous species, which eventually end up either facing extinction or surviving in the small crevices of the soil under the forest. This rapid pace of diversification and early decline is exclusive to cave arthropods and does not appear to be evident for the other arthropod groups studied. In most islands some lineages are still evolving into new species, so older islands show more exclusive species than younger ones, except for the older island, Santa Maria, where some groups show some decrease in the pace of diversification. Such differences between groups are caused by the opposing roles of the two components of diversification. When speciation is predominant, diversification is positive and the number of endemic species on an island increases. This pace slows down as extinction takes the lead, and diversification gets slower and eventually negative when the islands age and erode and they start to lose species numbers. While for most arthropods the Azores is a land full of opportunities, those inhabiting caves already feel the pressure of living in aging islands.

Other factors, such as dispersal capacity, also affect the pace of diversification within the Azores, suggesting that the diversity of evolutionary responses in different kinds of organisms is so wide that no general model, like the one proposed by Whittaker and colleagues is able to predict the pattern and process of diversification of all living groups. What this model does, however, is to allow integration of deviations from the general pattern into a common theoretical framework. By relating these deviations with the particular characteristics of each group, we might be able to ascertain how and why evolutionary processes happen on the isolated archipelagos that constitute some of the few long-term experiments provided by nature.

Source paper: Borges, P. A. V. & Hortal, J. (2008) Time, area and isolation: factors driving the diversification of Azorean arthropods. Journal of Biogeography, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.01980.x.

Phylogeography of red deer in Europe revealed by mitochondrial DNA markers

2008-10-01T23:43:00.000-07:00

Red deer (Cervus elaphus) is one of the most important and widespread game species throughout Europe, with an estimated population size exceeding half a million. The current distribution of red deer is assumed to be strongly influenced by human activities in addition to the colonization history and the last glaciation event. Due to the stationary habits of female social groups, the establishment of new populations by human translocations has often been reported. There are even historical data describing such translocations from the Viking sagas.
Worldwide, red deer has a circumboreal distribution, and genetic investigations have pointed to a central Asian origin. Despite its prominence as a big game animal, a detailed investigation of the genetic relationships of red deer populations in Europe has not been performed until now. As a consequence, the large (geographic) scale impacts of human translocations have not been known. In an article published in Journal of Biogeography, Anna Skog and co-workers report on the mitochondrial phylogeography of red deer in Europe.
Skog et al. analysed two regions within the mitochondrial genome from most European populations and by phylogenetic analyses of the gene sequences found that there are three main evolutionary lineages in Europe. The southern lineage is the most ancient. This genetic lineage is found in Africa in Sardinia/Corsica and at one site in Spain. The rest of Europe is populated by two genetically distinct red deer lineages, showing a western/northern and an eastern distribution, respectively.
Within each main lineage there are several variants, and the diversity and distribution of these variants give indications about putative glacial refugia. Skog and co-workers suggest that such refugia have existed in Spain (the Iberian Peninsula) and in the Balkans. Thus, the Western and Eastern clades have survived during the last glaciation in these regions and subsequently repopulated Europe from their respective refugia. This is further substantiated by calculations of how old the Western and Eastern clades are. Using the mutations separating the clades and estimated mutation rates for the genes, they calculated the split between the Western and Eastern clades to date at least 150,000 years ago, thus pre-dating the last glaciation.
Somewhat surprisingly, the analysis revealed no obvious signs of long-distance human translocations. While there is little doubt that this has happened in the past, the data of Skog et al. indicate that translocations have predominantly been short distance, or involved animals being translocated between regions where animals belong to the same main clade.

Source paper: Skog, A., Zachos, F.E., Rueness, E.K., Feulner, P.G.D., Mysterud, A., Langvatn, R., Lorenzini, R., Hmwe, S.S., Lehoczky, I., Hartl, G.B., Stenseth, N.C. & Jakobsen, K.S. (2008) Phylogeography of red deer (Cervus elaphus) in Europe. Journal of Biogeography, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.01986.x

Macroevolutionary mosaics – revealing the history for complex host–parasite systems

2008-10-01T23:32:00.000-07:00

An emerging synthesis linking biogeography, ecology and coevolution provides a new framework to explore the structure and his-tory of intricate biological associations such as those represented by host and parasite systems. A general model, established by Dr. Eric Hoberg from the US National Parasite Collection, USDA and Dr. Daniel Brooks from the University of Toronto, for the evolution of parasite biotas emerges from empirical evidence describing a complex mosaic in which host switching and geographic colonization have served as determinants of diversity.
Complex assemblages of hosts and parasites are explained through coevolution and colonization and by integrating aspects of three hypotheses – ecological fitting, oscillation (episodes of increasing host range alternating with isolation on particular hosts) and taxon pulses (cyclical episodes of geographical expansion of ancestral species followed by isolation of populations producing descendant species, occasionally accompanied by ecological divergence, setting the stage for the next episode of expansion) – to establish a context for host and geographical distri-bution across varying temporal and spatial scales. Concepts are examined and framed by equating colonization with a breakdown in mechanisms for ecological isolation such as those driven by periodic global extinction, or episodic and cyclical climate fluctuation and environmental perturbation that have characterized marine and terrestrial systems in evolutionary and ecological time. Major radiations for assemblages of hosts and parasites, across nearly all taxa, have their roots in episodic events of extinction and biotic expansion in Earth history.
The synthesis signifies a conceptual shift from a mechanistically simplistic view of diversification through long-term mutual association and mutual modification of lineages to one involving an intricate historical mosaic involving host switches resulting from change in ecological context and geographic distribution. This view suggests that major episodes of climate change can trigger multiple rapid host switches, including those we call emerging diseases. This provides an appropriate ecological and evolutionary dimension for understanding patterns of introduction and dissemination of invasive species, and emergence of pathogens, parasites and disease in the current regime of global climate change with attendant disruption of ecological continuity.

Source paper: Hoberg, E.P. & Brooks, D.R. (2008) A macroevolutionary mosaic: episodic host-switching, geographical colonization and diversification in complex host–parasite systems. Journal of Biogeography, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699-2008-01951.x.

High-altitude small mammals of the North American Great Basin are not completely isolated

2008-10-01T23:25:00.000-07:00

The term “sky islands” sounds intriguing, but it may be more lyrical than useful when discussing mammal distributions, according to new research from Eric Waltari of the Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History and Robert Guralnick from the University of Colorado at Boulder. The team used an emerging technique, ecological niche modeling, to show that the populations of small mammals living on mountaintops in the Great Basin—on islands in the sky—are not as isolated as previously thought.

Great Basin National Park (Nevada). Courtesy of the National Park Service.

In the new paper published in the Journal of Biogeography, Waltari and Guralnick test the concept of geographic isolation on thirteen species of small mammals. The species chosen were mapped with current and past climate data to “backcast” the distribution of each species at the height of the last ice age 21,000 years ago. The predictions of the model are calibrated with known fossil records. Backcasting allows researchers to test whether species had different distributions in the past; the current study, for example, found that most of the species (12 of 13) lived at lower elevations 21,000 years ago and that the average distribution of each species was larger than it is now.
Determining the area that species inhabited in the past helps researchers understand current population distribution within the Great Basin and potential linkages between “sky islands.” Many of the species in this study (9 of 13) had suitable habitat below their current range that could link different populations. This surprising result can be further tested with molecular research. Waltari and Guralnick also found that not all species were widespread across the basin 21,000 years ago, highlighting the idiosyncratic nature of species’ responses to climate change.
“Niche modeling is a quick and straightforward approach to addressing problems that molecular data will eventually solve,” says Waltari.

Source paper: Waltari, E. & Guralnick, R.P. (2008) Ecological niche modelling of montane mammals in the Great Basin, North America: examining past and present connectivity of species across basins and ranges. Journal of Biogeography, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.01959.x

2008-09-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Biogeographers:

The International Biogeography Society is "moving into high gear" to get ready for the 4th IBS meeting in January of 2009 in Merida, Mexico. For more information you can check our new website (http://www.biogeography.org/). Please note that the registration fee is reasonable and includes lunch and the banquet.

We have four ½-day symposia planned: 1) Patterns & Processes in Biotic Exchange, 2) The Biogeography of Disease, 3) Asian & American Disjuncts, and 4) The Biogeography of Extinction. Poster sessions are an important part of our meeting and we invite posters that cover all areas of biogeography. We also have three popular Workshops: Visualizing Evolution, Spatial Analysis, and Communicating Biogeography.

Check out the website for more information on all of these. And there are some exciting new developments to look for as well:

First I am pleased to announce that Carsten Rahbek and the board of the Nordic Ecological Society (NES; Ecography) have agreed to sponsor one of our symposia, "The Biogeography of Extinction". Having such sponsorship is critical to keeping the costs of the meeting reasonable. In addition, invited speakers for all symposia will be offered the opportunity to submit a paper to a special issue of Ecography. Collaboration between IBS and NES should help both societies. In addition, this idea fits in well with one of the current goals of IBS: seeking to broaden the awareness of our society and to increase collaboration with other likeminded societies and journals. I would like to thank Carsten Rahbek along with Miguel Araújo and Jack Williams for originating the proposal for potential sponsorship and to NES for approving it.

Second, for the first time the presentations in the symposia are of varying length and involve IBS members from different stages of their career.

Third, this meeting will have, also for the first time, ½ day of concurrent sessions of contributed (oral) short papers. Anyone submitting a poster abstract can ask that it be considered for one of
these sessions; a committee has been set up to evaluate the submitted abstracts and select the ones that will be asked to present a short paper (15 min).

Fourth, IBS has been successful in acquiring funds that can be used to help support travel costs for students. Details of these awards and application material will be posted on the IBS website by October 1. Thanks to Jack Williams, George Stevens, Mike Dawson, and Dov Sax for their help with this effort.

Finally, there will be awards presented at the business meeting for the best posters. Our local host for the meeting is Ella Vazquez from UNAM, our Vice President for Conferences is Dave Hafner, and Lois Alexander is our web master: without a large commitment of time from all of these members this meeting would not be possible.

I will conclude by asking you to please consider sponsoring a graduate student so that we continue to attract the young members of our society to our meeting. I encourage you to register now; we are operating on a first come first served basis for all attendees and posters.

See you in Merida!

Vicki Funk, President of IBS

P.S. The link has been re-established and you may now access the journals on line again (thanks Rob and Lois)!