Call for Symposia - Climate Change Biogeography - IBS Special Meeting

Call for Plenary symposia

The International Biogeography Society is seeking for three plenary symposia to be held at the 2018 special International Biogeography Society meeting on Climate Change Biogeography, 21-25 March, 2018 in Évora, Portugal.

The symposia are an integral part of our meeting as they are in the form of plenary sessions in which all attendees participate. In this Climate Change Biogeography meeting we are seeking proposals for three symposia, each targeting the following topics:

·      “The past”: This symposium should showcase the state-of-art research in using reconstructions of ancient distributions and climates to better understand current and future changes.

·      “Present: From patterns to processes”. This theme will showcase a range of biogeographical studies including macroecological approaches to unravel classical biogeographical to state-of-art mechanistic modelling to large-scale experimental studies across major biogeographical gradients.

·      “Looking into the future”. The final theme will highlight studies that integrate biogeographical approaches to forecast changes in species distributions as a function of future climate change. This theme should showcase the development and application of state-of-the-art modelling approaches that combine ecology, physical geography and phylogenetics.

For more details on the themes, please check our website: http://www.ibs2018.uevora.pt/themes/

These plenary symposia will provide opportunity for several speakers (typically 5-6) to present cutting-edge work that will appeal to a broad cross-section of Biogeographers. Ideally, the talks should address current debates or provide a synthesis and integration for a selected theme or topic.

Symposium proposals should include the following information:

-       Name, institution and email of organizers.  Please delegate a single organizer as the point of contact between the organizers and the IBS.

-       Names (institution, email and tentative title) of 4-6 speakers.  Please only list speakers that you have contacted and indicate their current level of commitment (tentative or confirmed).

-       Title of symposium

-       Session description (focus on the theme and strong justification): < 600 words.

Check symposia from previous meetings at the IBS website: http://www.biogeography.org/html/Meetings/index.html. 

Review process.  All proposals will be peer reviewed by external reviewers selected by the IBS board using a score system. Note that only three proposals will be selected from the pool of submissions for plenary symposia. IBS will provide partial financial support for travel of symposia speakers, but we expect that symposium speakers and organizers will cover the remainder of expenses. We strongly encourage organizers to convey this information to potential speakers and try to use the partial financial support in an optimal manner. Non-selected submissions may still be considered as a parallel session, though in this case the meeting will not be able to cover travelling expenses for speakers.

  

Submission and questions: Please send proposals for symposia by email to Miguel Matias (mgmatias@uevora.pt) by July 30, 2017.