Working on species range shifts in mountain areas? Submit an abstract or propose a mountain-specific session or workshop.
The Species on the Move Conference invites you to submit an abstract that can contribute to discussions on understanding and responding to climate driven species redistribution. The global redistribution of the 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 a unique opportunity to advance theories of biogeography, evolutionary ecology, and macroecology.
This conference brings together scientists and natural resource managers working in the disciplines of global change, biogeography and evolution, and is relevant in contexts of natural resource management, biodiversity management and conservation, and theoretical ecology.
- 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
- 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)
Deadline for abstracts: 10 December 2018.
Species on the Move takes place 22-26 July 2019 in Kruger National Park, South Africa.
For more information, please visit the Species on the Move website.
According to this blog post from the Mountain Invasion Research Network (MIREN), human actions are having a significant impact on the distribution of plant species - and even more so than the warming climate.
“Humans are taking non-native plant species with them all over the world, and introducing them to other mountain regions. Once there, these species can profit from human structures like mountain roads to move rapidly to higher elevations,” says Jonas Lembrechts of MIREN and The Research Centre of Excellence on Plants and Ecosystems (PLECO) at the University of Antwerp. Read more.
