On 22-26 July 2019, Species on the Move (SOTM) is hosting its international conference Species on the Move 2019 in Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Background
The global redistribution of our planets’ species is widely recognised as a fingerprint of climate change, however, the mechanisms that underpin such range shifts are poorly understood. Additionally, the pervasiveness of range shifts, from poles to the equator, and depths of oceans to tops of mountains, provides us with unique opportunity to advance our theory of biogeography, evolutionary ecology and macroecology.
Our move into the ‘anthropocene’ allows unprecedented opportunity to understand the mechanisms that drive species distributions across ecosystems and address the fundamental tenet of ecology: What lives where and why? However, such dramatic changes also pose significant challenges for sustainable management of our natural resources.
About Species on the Move 2019
The conference brings together scientists and natural resource managers working in the disciplines of global change, biogeography and evolution, and relevant in contexts of natural resource management, biodiversity management and conservation, and theoretical ecology.
Species responses to climate change is a rapidly evolving research field, however, much of our progress is being made in independent research areas: E.g. understanding the process vs. responding to the implications, terrestrial vs. marine ecosystems, global meta-analyses vs. in-depth species-specific approaches. This interdisciplinary conference develops connections between these parallel streams, and across temporal and spatial scales.
Following the successful inaugural conference in 2016, the 2019 Species on the Move conference, will include themes such as:
- Detection, attribution & prediction of changes in species distributions
- Understanding ecological and evolutionary mechanisms facilitating or hindering range shifts
- Impacts of climate change on community structure and patterns of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity
- The paleo-ecological perspective: Species changes in distribution over deep time
- Conservation paradigms & management strategies for a shifting future
- Governance, legal and ethical issues for shifting species and changing ecosystems
- Cultural, social and economic dimensions of changes in species distributions
- Indigenous knowledge and species on the move 9 Implications of species on the move for human and animal health
- Changes in species distribution and climate feedbacks (e.g. greening of the Arctic)
- The impacts of species on the move for global strategies and policies (SDGs, Biodiversity & Climate Change)
Join the conference mailing list and we will notify you as planning proceeds.
