ATBC 2003 Special Symposium

Tropical ecosystems house a high proportion of the earth's biodiversity. The mechanistic basis for the maintenance of this high biodiversity has been the subject of more than 30 years of theoretical and empirical research, much of it directed to describing patterns and investigating interactions between plants and their abiotic environments. However, recent developments have stimulated an increasing awareness of the importance of biotic interactions to the generation and maintenance of species diversity in the tropics.

These developments, along with other research in tropical biology, are the focus of the 2003 Special Symposium. The Symposium will review the recent developments in research on biotic interactions in tropical forests and prospects for the future and will feature 12 keynote speakers whose research interests cover the plant-plant, plant-animal, plant-microbe and multitrophic interactions relevant to the maintenance of high diversity in tropical forests. These plenary sessions will take place over three mornings (7, 8, and 9 July 03).

Programme for the Special Symposium

Monday 7 July: Plant-Plant Interactions

• Life-history trade-offs and the maintenance of diversity in tropical forest trees
  Jim Dalling (University of Illinois, USA) & David Burslem (University of Aberdeen, UK)

• Shifts in plant-plant interactions: implications for ecosystem functioning
  John J. Ewel (United States Forest Service, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA), Ankila J. Hiremath (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore, India) & Seth W. Bigelow (United States Forest Service, Davis, California, USA)

Monday 7 July: Plant-Microbe Interactions

• The dimensions of disease in tropical forests
  Greg Gilbert (University of California, USA)

• Mycorrhizas and ecosystem processes in tropical rain forest - implications for diversity
  Lee Su See (Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, Kepong, Malaysia) & Ian Alexander (University of Aberdeen, UK)

Tuesday 8 July: Plant-Animal Interactions

• Implications of tree spatial distribution for pollination, seed production and dispersal
  Jaboury Ghazoul (Imperial College, London, UK)

• The impact of herbivores on tropical plant diversity
  Bob Marquis (University of Missouri, USA)

Tuesday 8 July: Multitrophic interactions

• Multitrophic interactions among tropical plants, ants and plant herbivores
  Doyle McKey (University of Montpellier, France)

• Multitrophic interactions in the Brazilian savanna: ant-homopteran systems, associated insect herbivores, and host plant
  Paulo S. Oliveira (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil) & Kleber Del-Claro (Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Brazil)

Wednesday 9 July: Prediction and Management

• Modelling the maintenance of diversity
  Steve Pacala (Princeton University, USA)

• Human-dominated tropical landscapes: a new mix of alien and native species coexist in harmony
  Ariel Lugo (USDA Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, USA)

Wednesday 9 July: Synthesis and Perspectives

• The dynamics of a tropical dry forest in Mudumalai (India) in relation to fire and herbivory by elephants
  R. Sukumar, H. S. Suresh, H. S. Dattaraja, A. Srinidhi, & C. Nath (Center for Ecological Research, Bangalore, India)

• Is ecological nature neutral-symmetric? Towards a generalized statistical-mechanical theory of relative species abundance
  Steve Hubbell (University of Georgia, USA), Jayanth Banavar (Pennsylvania State University) & Amos Maritan (International School for Advanced Studies, Italy)

The programme and the abstracts for the oral sessions is available as a zipped doc file and also as a pdf file.