DIVERSITAS at a GLANCE
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Newsletter n°6, 2007 DIVERSITAS at a GLANCE A DIVERSITAS General p 1 B Core Projects and Networks p 2 C News from the National Committees and Regional Networks p 5 D DIVERSITAS Products p 7 E Other Relevant Meetings and Products p 7 F ESSP News p 10 This electronic newsletter is meant as a way to inform the community on all aspects of DIVERSITAS. It is published every 3 months. Deadline for reception of material for the next issue is August 25th 2007. Please note: change the ‘_AT_’ by ‘@’ in the email addresses A DIVERSITAS General DIVERSITAS’ Headquarters have moved and are now located at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France. Letters have to be sent to the following new mailing address: DIVERSITAS Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) Maison Buffon 57 rue Cuvier - CP 41 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France The secretariat can be contacted at these new phone and fax numbers: Tel: + 33 1 40 79 80 40 Fax: + 33 1 40 79 80 45 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.diversitas-international.org Physical address: If you are sending your documents by DHL, UPS, FedEx, etc, please use the following address: DIVERSITAS Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle Maison Buffon 36 rue Geoffroy Saint Hilaire 75005 Paris, France 1 DIVERSITAS is interested in your project: In order to submit your project for endorsement as an official DIVERSITAS project, please look at the endorsement procedure International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (IMoSEB) 28 February-02 March 2007 – Yaoundé, Cameroon IMoSEB African Regional Consultation. Read the highlights and the reports here 26-28 April 2007 - Geneva, Switzerland IMoSEB European regional consultation, the third of a set of regional consultations. The final report identifies ten needs for an IMoSEB; a possible structure to meet these needs; and goals and guiding principles for a strategy to communicate scientific information on biodiversity. More information on the regional consultation and the upcoming ones (report, list of participants, presentations given...) click here Also see Earth Negotiations Bulletin for a report on the meeting You can contribute to the debate via the IMoSEB Forum 27-31 March 2007 – Cap Town, South Africa South African Science-Policy Dialog on biodiversity: a contribution to the IMoSEB consultation organised by DIVERSITAS. Please read the conclusions of this event: Cape Town recommendations and the Geneva report 15-17 March 2007 – Postdam, Germany IMoSEB discussed at the G8 Environment Ministers Meeting. The G8 environment ministers adopted the Potsdam Initiative on Biological Diversity: in launching the Initiative on 17th March, Ministers made a number of commitments including (1) initiating a process of analysing the global economic benefit of biological diversity, (2) building on ongoing efforts at gathering and making available information on all known species, (3) supporting the ongoing consultative process on an international mechanism for providing scientific advice (IMoSEB), (4) supporting the activities of the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP) and (5) stepping up and better integrating biodiversity issues into development co- operation. Read the Press release from German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; Potsdam Initiative; Background paper on biodiversity and the Transcript of teleconference with J Baird (Minister Environment, Canada) B CORE PROJECTS AND NETWORKS bioGENESIS The SC-bioGENESIS welcomes 3 new members: Kazuhiro Kogure (Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Japan), Keith Crandall (Brigham Young University, Utah, USA) and Andrew P Hendry (McGill, Montreal, Canada) 11–16 March 2007 - Tsumagoi, Japan Fifth Okazaki Biology Conference, OBC 5 on "Speciation and Adaptation -Ecological Genomics of Model Organisms and Beyond-". T Yahara (Kyushu University, Japan, SC-bioGENESIS) presented " From Daylily to Nightlily: An Evolutionary Shift of Floral Syndromes " and gave an introduction of bioGENESIS 19-20 April 2007 - Durham, North Carolina, USA Synergies between the Tree of Life and the Bar Code of Life (invitation only).This activity is carried out in collaboration with the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) at the National 2 Evolutionary Synthesis Centre (NESCent) and is co-sponsored by DIVERSITAS. The event was organised by M Donoghue (DIVERSITAS), S Tillier (EDIT) and D Schindel (Sloan Foundation) 30-31 May 2007 – Padova, Italy 2nd meeting of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) of the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) to review the progress and activities of EDIT. A Larigauderie (DIVERSITAS International Secretariat) is member of the SAC-EDIT 03-06 June 2007 – Beijing, China Symposium “Evolutionary Biology in the 21st Century – Tracing Patterns of Evolution through the Tree of Life”. Co-sponsored by DIVERSITAS and organized by M Donoghue (DIVERSITAS) and Y-L Qui (NNSFC, China-CAS, JSPS). More… 16-21 June 2007 – Christchurch, New Zealand SSB symposium “Phylogenetic diversity: towards a synthesis of concepts and applications for biodiversity conservation”. Event co-sponsored by DIVERSITAS and coordinated by D Faith (SC- bioGENESIS) at the "Evolution 2007 joint annual meeting of the SSE/SSB and ASN. Contact D Faith, read the rationale 14-15 July 2007 - University of Zurich, Switzerland Mediterranean symposium: Origin and evolution of biota in Mediterranean climate zones, with emphasis on the Mediterranean basin: an integrative vision. Symposium co-sponsored by DIVERSITAS and organised by E Conti, (University of Zurich, Switzerland, SC-bioGENESIS). Contact E Conti. More… 15-19 July 2007 - Morelia, México The impact of plant phylogenies on tropical ecology and evolutionary studies. Symposium co sponsored by DIVERSITAS and organized by A Jaramillo (University of Missouri-Columbia, USA) and LG Lohmann (Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil, SC-bioGENESIS) at the ATBC Annual meeting "Linking Tropical Biology with Human Dimensions." The 1 day symposium will highlight the importance of phylogenies to ecological research and stimulate discussion on ecological questions from a phylogenetic standpoint. Contact LG Lohmann, read the rationale 28-29 September 2007 – MNHN, Paris, France DIVERSITAS bioGENESIS Scientific Committee meeting (invitation only) ecoSERVICES 21-22 May 2007 – Paris, France SC-ecoSERVICES (invitation only) 22-23 May 2007 – Paris, France Working Group on Economy of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (invitation only). The meeting discussed the state of the art on the economics of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and in particular the development of a framework to capture the relationship between the monitoring of, and the valuation of, biodiversity resources and functions, with a view to produce terms of reference for further study of the topic as requested by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity 05-08 June 2007 – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE)’s 7th international conference, ESEE 2007: Integrating Natural and Social Sciences for Sustainability. More… C Perrings (SC-ecoSERVICES, SC-agroBIODIVERSITY) is a member of the Scientific Committee 3 C Sullivan (SC-freshwaterBIODIVERSITY) is chair of the session entitled “Environmental Indicators” and presents 2 talks: Water Stress and its Assessment: Building A Matrix Approach and Water stress assessment by modelling the dynamics of environment-society interactions U Pascual (SC-agroBIODIVERSITY) is part of the review panel and presents results on The ecological economics of traditional knowledge bioSUSTAINABILITY 20-21 Sept 2007 - Kings College, Cambridge, UK 9th BIOECON Conference on Economics and Institutions for Biodiversity Conservation. Contact: M Sarr More… Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) GMBA project on Geo-referenced Biological Databases as a tool for Understanding Mountain Biodiversity. There is a strong potential in biological databases linked to geophysical data (e.g. altitude, temperature) for the analysis of mountain biodiversity patterns. In cooperation with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) encourages a global effort to mine georeferenced archive databases on mountain organisms. The EUROMONT initiative is one example of such a data analysis. It assesses climate threat to alpine plant diversity and focuses on European mountain ranges. Please, read the paper by A Guisan, EM Spehn and C Körner. 2007. MRI Newsletter 8: Georeferenced Biological Databases - A tool for Understanding Mountain Biodiversity. Mountain Research and Development, 27(1):80-81 freshwaterBIODIVERSITY 26-27 April 2007 - Elewijt, Belgium Second workshop on cooperative strategies for current international initiatives on freshwater biodiversity. The workshop was organized by the Belgian Biodiversity Platform and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and sponsored by the Global Water System Project (GWSP) and the Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo). The goal of the meeting was to finalize a common view for the consortium and to define a strategy to build a synthetic knowledge platform/webportal on Freshwater Biodiversity. More… 27 August–01 September 2007 - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 3rd International Symposium on Riverine Landscapes (TISORL): “Global change and river-floodplain ecosystems” 03-06 September 2007 - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 2nd International Conference on Environmental-Flows 03-06 September