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.
Natural resources are our life support system - it is vital that we understand how that system works and how to keep it doing so. Biogeography and ecology are two major scientific disciplines that view natural patterns and processes from different perspectives. Each discipline is growing and approaching the other - it is time to more fully consider the intersection between disciplines in order to more effectively understand how nature works. This project provided travel support for eleven graduate students from seven different US universities to attend and present their research at the 2011 International Biogeography Society conference. A central feature of the project was the symposium entitled "Biogeography and ecology - two lenses in one telescope," which addressed the intersection between biogeography and ecology and pointed to future research directions at that intersection. Besides the eleven student presentations, the symposium resulted in twelve other publications. Travel support consisted of reimbursement for costs such as mileage, airfare, meals, and hotels, according to audited and official State of Florida rules and regulations, because reimbursements were processed at at the University of Central Florida (the institution of one of the principal investigators). No travel support was provided to any other persons as a result of this award.
