Book "What can we learn from islands? The perspectives of eight researchers"
- January 9th, 2017
- Interviews
- Print Article
Is now available for free download the book "What can we learn from islands? The perspectives of eight researchers"
The book What can we learn from islands? The perspectives of eight researchers is now available for free download here. This publication brings together the interviews conducted by Marta Daniela Santos (Communication Office - cE3c) to the eight plenary speakers of the international congress Island Biology 2016, organized by the Azorean Biodiversity Group/cE3c. The conversations, now gathered in a single publication, aim to explore the research area of each interviewee in an accessible language.
Islands represent a very small fraction of the Earth's surface but, at the same time, hold very high levels of biodiversity. Understanding the way environmental changes are affecting these ecosystems, what can be the impact of the introduction of new species, and the way they evolve from the point of view of geology with correspondent impacts on the speciation processes, are just a few of the several questions being addressed by researchers from around the world.
The book What can we learn from islands? The perspectives of eight researchers, now published, gathers in a single publication the interviews conducted by Marta Daniela Santos (Communication Office - cE3c) to the eight plenary speakers of the international congress Island Biology 2016, which took place at Angra do Heroísmo (Terceira Island, Azores) in July 2016. The interviewees are (in order of their plenary presentations at the congress): Daniel Simberloff (Univ. Tennessee, USA), Susan Clayton (The College of Wooster, USA), Paulo Borges (Azorean Biodiversity Group/cE3c), Robert Whittaker (Univ. Oxford, UK), Pedro Cardoso (Finnish Museum of Natural History, Univ. Helsinki, Finland/cE3c), George Roderick (Univ. Berkeley, California, USA), Isabel Sanmartín (Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, Spain) e Jens Olesen (Univ. Aarhus, Denmark). The interviews began by being published online weekly, between September and October 2016, on the websites of cE3c, the Azorean Biodiversity Group/cE3c Azorean Biodiversity Group/cE3c and the Island Biology 2016 congress.
More than 400 researchers participated in the congress, where presented the latest results in island biology. The conference was organized by the Azorean Biodiversity Group/cE3c with the coordination of Paulo Borges - who also authored the Preface of this publication.
"I learned a lot with these interviews", says Marta Daniela Santos. "On the one hand, I learned a lot about island biology. I didn't know this area very well yet - my background is in Physics - and preparing for the interviews allowed me to look at islands from several different and interesting perspectives. On the other hand, I learned more about science communication and the challenges of an interview: studying the subject, preparing the questions, working on the text...it was challenging and very enriching", concludes the researcher.
http://ce3c.ciencias.ulisboa.pt/outreach/press&events/ver.php?id=731