Meeting Theme: Interactions in Science, Interactions in Nature

The broad theme of the meeting will contribute to an ecological understanding that can lead Australia into the future. Interactions in nature operate at varying scales from individuals to assemblages of species and between species and the abiotic environment. How they influence biodiversity remains a central concern of our discipline. An emerging conceptual framework is centred on a network of ecological interactions among plant and animal species that strongly influences the composition and dynamics of communities. These and familiar concepts of competition, predation, and mutualism, continue to generate strong theoretical debate to determine how facilitation, inhibition and indirect interactions may structure ecological communities.

Ecologists too are becoming more actively involved in a broader sweep of interactions across academic disciplines with economists, engineers, land managers, policy makers, sociologists and the public community. These interactions in science meet a crucial need for the public to be more informed about the implications of climate change and other global issues. The new influences from other disciplines are changing the language and agenda for the science that underpins an environmentally sustainable Australia. This gives ecologists a greater voice through the application of their work to problems and issues of broad concern to the community, but can it go too far?

What's new this year?

(1) Speed Sessions

This year we are introducing an hour long speed session (each speed talk slot is 5 minutes) on Tuesday afternoon. The idea of a speed talk is to present a short, pithy interesting highlight of your research and /or introduce a new or controversial ecological perspective or opinion. There will be no time for questions after each talk, but there will be an opportunity for questions and discussion in a 45 min period after the talks. Time slots for speed session spoken papers are 5 minutes – but please prepare for 4 minutes speaking time!
NOTE: Students may present a speed paper, but are NOT eligible for a student prize if they do so. If you wish to be eligible, you must either present a standard spoken paper or a poster.

(2) Workshops

We are offering three statistical workshops and a wildlife photography workshop on the middle day (Wed 3rd) of the conference. There is a subsidy in the price for ESA members. Click here for more information.

(3) Fully Carbon Neutral Conference

This year ESA will be running its annual conference on a fully carbon-neutral basis. This means that the Society is attempting to offset all greenhouse gas emissions generated through activities associated with the conference. We hope to have a lively discussion about this during the conference, and to stimulate debate amongst members. Click here for a fact-sheet with more information.

To give the ESA feedback on developing future strategies and contributions to global climate change issues, please participate in the forum on the society's main website. To get to the forum, log into your account at www.ecolsoc.org.au >Click the Forum link on the menu >Open the Environment and Conservation Discussion folder > click the Carbon offset link.

(4) The Australian Ecology Research and The Nature Conservancy Applied Conservation awards

Click here for more information.

Key dates

Guidelines for presenters

Website last updated 11-nov-08. For website comments or feedback click here, for contacts for all other questions please see our Contacts page.