Call for symposia and workshop proposals - IBS 2015 Biennial Meeting in Bayreuth Germany

The International Biogeography Society seeks proposals for symposia for the 2015 Biennial Conference, 9-12 January, 2015 in Bayreuth, Germany.  These plenary symposia traditionally have provided four to five presentations of cutting-edge work across a cross-section biogeographic research.  Past symposia may be seen on the IBS website at http://www.biogeography.org/html/Meetings/index.html.  The board of the IBS typically collaborates with symposia organizers to develop a set of complementary presentations.  We therefore encourage those with an interest for convening a symposium to submit the following information.  In a recent survey, the membership has expressed interest in global change and conservation, deep history (tectonic-scale) biogeography, applications of phylogeography, macroecology, disjunction and refugia.  Informal inquiries are welcome.

1. Title

2. Description of the thematic focus and a brief rationale why this theme is timely and important (a half-page is sufficient).

3. Potential speaker names and affiliations.  Contacting potential speakers is not necessary at this stage.  We anticipate that each symposium can feature three or four invited speakers.  Symposia speakers should include a mix of senior researchers and up-and-coming junior biogeographers; gender and geographic balance are important.

4. Potential sources for funding: While the IBS can provide partial financial support for travel of symposia speakers (US$4000 per symposium), additional fundraising from the symposium organizers is expected.

Workshops will precede the meeting on January 8th.  We are interested in proposals for workshops that will be of broad interest to the IBS membership.  Workshops in the past have focused on analytical methods, software, databases, informatics, and writing for publication or for general audiences.  Workshops may range from 4 to 8 hours in length. Note that workshops are required to be self-supporting via the registration fees they generate.  Popular topics suggested by the membership are centered on developing skills (for example, implementing species distribution models, specific modeling and statistical topics, bioinformatics, GIS (including open source), and methods in historical biogeography) as well as teaching and writing biogeography.  Please send a short description of your idea for a workshop, names of organizers of the workshop, and planned activities associated with the workshop.  Informal inquiries are welcome as well.

Please send proposals for symposia and workshops by email to Dan Gavin (dgavin@uoregon.edu), IBS VP for Conferences, by 16 August 2013.