Invited keynote presentations
NEOBIOTA: Towards a Synthesis
Tuesday, 23. September 2008 - Opening evening lecture
Marcel Rejmánek University of California, Davis, California, USA
Marcel conducts research on plant invasions, vegetation succession and classification, and the ecology of seed dispersal in tropical forests. He worked on various topics of plant invasions, including, for example, determinants of species invasiveness with focus on pines and woody plants in general, relation between vegetation succession and invasions, community invasibility and the concept of residence time.
Tom Stohlgren US Geological Survey, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
Tom is Branch Chief for the Invasive Species Science Branch at the USGS Fort Collins Science Center in Colorado with 28 years of experience as an ecologist. His research interests include: assessing landscape-scale to national patterns of invasive species in the US, linking information at landscape-, regional-, national-scales with known precision and accuracy, developing GIS-based, predictive spatial and temporal ecological models to guide the management of public lands.
Tim Blackburn Institute of Zoology, London, UK
Tim’s research interests encompass a broad range of topics in large-scale ecology and comparative evolutionary ecology. Most of his recent research has addressed the ecology and evolution of invasions, especially the causes of establishment success, and how invasions by exotic organisms (including humans) relate to extinctions of native bird species on oceanic islands. He is also involved with collaborations on biotic homogenization, comparative physiology and the evolution of egg coloration in birds.
Steven Chown Centre of Excelence for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Steven’s research interests span a broad range of topics.
This stems from the fact that in his opinion an
understanding of the processes underlying
global patterns in the distribution of biodiversity can only be achieved
by an integration of disciplines. Given that conservation is a global
priority, understanding the distribution of this diversity must
undoubtedly be one of biology's most pressing goals. Physiological
tolerances, ecological interactions, and historical events all
contribute, in varying degrees depending on the taxon and scale of
study, to the distribution of organisms. Hence if diversity is to be
understood these aspects of the biology of all organisms must be
integrated. Currently this forms his major research interest. Thus he is
engaged in biogeographic and macroecological studies, evolutionary
physiology, spatial ecology, invasion biology and the integration of
these fields.
Piero Genovesi INFS - Via Ca’ Fornacetta 9, I-40064, Ozzano Emilia (Bo) Italy; Deputy Chair IUCN Invasive Species Specialist Group
Piero Genovesi has a PhD in animal ecology, and since 1996 is a conservation officer with the Italian Widlife Institute, where it coordinates the activities on invasive alien species.
Deputy chair of IUCN SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group since 2006, has cooperated with several international institutions such as the Council of Europe, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the European Environmental Agency on the issue of biological invasions.
He is a co-author of the European Strategy on Invasive Alien Species and is very active in the development of coordinated policies on the issue in Europe.
Deeply involved in the development of a policy on invasive alien species. He has been a partner of DAISIE and of several other European programmes.
