Funds received from the NSF will be used to support for a symposium, entitled "Neuroecology: Neural Determinants of Ecological Processes from Individuals to Ecosystems," to be presented as a Society-Wide Symposium at the 2011 Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, on January 3-7, 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The goal of this symposium is to promote a new synthesis and general theory of neuroecology. Neuroecology synthesizes neuroethological and ecological principles. Neuroecology embodies both the neural basis for behavior and the role of behavior in establishing patterns of organism abundances and species distributions within natural habitats. As such, it scales from molecules to communities and ecosystems. The topics included in the symposium cross the disciplines of animal behavior, neuroscience, chemical/physiological ecology as well as physics and chemistry. Along with senior researchers this this symposium and related events includes participation of graduate students, post-docs and junior faculty including women and ethnic minorities. Symposium proceedings are published in the society's journal, "Integrative and Comparative Biology".
Our NSF project provided funding to support a symposium, entitled "Neuroecology: Neural Determinants of Ecological Processes from Individuals to Ecosystems," presented as a Society-Wide Symposium at the 2011 Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, on January 3-7, 2011, in Salt Lake City, Utah. There were 26 presentations in all. These included 12 presentations in the symposium itself, and 15 presentations in complementary oral and poster sessions. The intellectual merit of our symposium was that it promoted a new synthesis and general theory of neuroecology, by bringing together researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate and undergraduate students of diverse backgrounds to present their research and ideas and to discuss future work and directions. We pushed for an integration of observational and experimental approaches, with the aim of yielding a new, emergent view that is otherwise impossible from isolated physiological, behavioral, or ecological components. Our symposium covered a wide range of taxa (vertebrates, invertebrates, plants) and diverse natural habitats (marine, freshwater, terrestrial; tropics and temperate climates) across many disciplines (from cell physiology to ecosystems ecology). The broader impacts of our project include the participation of many individuals in the project, including some from underrepresented groups. From the 12 individuals who received financial support from NSF funding, 3 are women, 2 are minorities (1 latino, 1 latina), 3 are doctoral or postdoctoral trainees, and 2 are junior faculty (untenured assistant professors). In addition, many of the presenters in the complementary sessions were women, students, and/or from underrepresented groups. Our NSF funding also enabled us to leverage additional funding for our symposium and publications, including private funding for a social event at the conference that enabled us to bring together nearly 100 people, including the participants of the symposium and complementary oral and poster sessions, to have informal discussions and networking. Our estimate is that several hundreds of conference attendees spent time in the symposium, contributed sessions, and/or social event. Our symposium was also covered immediately after the conference in an article in the general science publication, New Scientist. Outcomes of our project included the symposium itself, complementary sessions composed of oral presentations on the same topic by postdocs, graduate students, undergraduate students, and others, and publication of the symposium proceedings and abstracts of the complementary sessions in Integrative and Comparative Biology. Our symposium had the cover image to this journal issue.
