Foundations and future of biogeography

The working group will address three objectives. First, to compile a set of seminal research papers, provide original commentary on their relevance, and organise them into a book, "The Foundations of Biogeography." This book is to be published by the University of Chicago Press. Second, to organise an international society of biogeography, along with supporting activities, such as the initiation of society meetings and the development of a web page. Third, to develop and establish future working groups and workshops on biogeography.

Rationale and Strategies:

The field of biogeography has a long and distinguished history. In the past several decades it has experienced renewed interest, with a greatly increased volume of work. It is, therefore, both timely and important that we develop a more thorough understanding of the foundations of this field, including all of its subdisciplines. The compilation of a book on this subject should greatly facilitate this endeavour. To accomplish this we have invited a distinguished group of biogeographers and ecologists from a variety of geographic regions and subdisciplines to join us in this project.

As much as any field, the new biogeography that has emerged is interdisciplinary, international, and spans a broad range of spatial and temporal scales. To better foster interactions among the diverse group of scientists who do biogeography, we believe it is important to establish an international society of biogeography. By bringing eminent biogeographers from diverse backgrounds and locations together we plan to do the initial work in establishing such a society.

We also believe that there are a number of interesting and very important questions that can best be addressed by small groups of highly motivated and interactive biogeographers. By bringing biogeographers together for the first time we hope to stimulate the advancement of the field of biogeography and the many disciplines that interact and overlap with biogeography.