Journal of Experimental Biology Symposium 2020
Predicting the future: species survival in a changing world
Organisers: Craig Franklin, Hans Hoppeler
Date: 22-26 March 2020
Location: Hotel Eiger, Mϋrren, Switzerland
Experimental biologists have the potential to play a significant role in assessing the susceptibility or resilience of species to future, human-induced environmental change, whether on a global scale such as climate change (e.g. effects of global warming, ocean acidification, increased UV-B radiation) or more locally (e.g. impacts of the damming of rivers, urban heat). Understanding how changing environmental drivers – including temperature, rainfall, salinity, oxygen levels, pH and UV radiation – affect physiological processes and whether organisms have the capacity to physiologically compensate is becoming more critical given the potential effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function, but also due to food security. Developing models to predict the future will require not only a mechanistic understanding of the effects of environmental drivers and their interactions on physiological homeostasis but also a greater understanding of the genotypic and phenotypic plasticity of species. The potential exists to use this knowledge to deliver mitigation measures and management strategies to protect species and ensure food security.
This symposium will bring together experts who work across taxa and environmental drivers and who are using physiological tools and approaches to predict the future responses of organisms to environmental change. Speakers will be asked to reflect upon how the field has changed over the past 10 years, i.e. since the 2010 JEB Special issue on ‘Survival in a Changing World’.
Venue
The Symposium will be held in the Hotel Eiger in the charming Swiss village of Mürren, which is easily accessible by train from international airports at Bern and Zürich. As the highest altitude ski resort in the Bernese Oberland, car-free Mürren is perched on a high terrace facing the famous Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains.
Hotel Eiger Mürren
Aegerten
3825 Mürren
Switzerland
Tel: +41 33 856 54 54
Fax: +41 33 856 54 56
E-Mail: info@hoteleiger.com
Website: www.hoteleiger.com/en/