Microbial Diversity and Its Role in Conservation: The 2007 AMNH Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Spring Symposium

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On April 26 and 27, 2007, the American Museum of Natural History's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) will hold its twelfth annual Spring Symposium. This year, the topic will be "Microbial Diversity and Its Role in Conservation. This unique gathering will convene a diverse group of scientists to examine the intersection of microbes and conservation biology. Through a series of talks, panel discussions, and poster presentations, the conference will address pressing questions of the amount of microbial diversity on the planet, how this diversity influences other organisms, both positively and negatively, and how conservation practices should take microbial life into account. This symposium will represent one of the first opportunities for disease ecologists, microbial genomicists, marine virologists, biogeochemists, and conservation geneticists/biologists, to name a few, to come together and discuss how microbial diversity is assessed, how it is threatened, and how the "unseen majority" profoundly affects the fate of all other life on Earth. This symposium represents a significant new initiative of interdisciplinary thinking for conservation. The program includes a diverse group of speakers. Ten of the twenty-four confirmed participants (42%) are women. Throughout the symposium, approximately 70 posters from other scientists, including graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from local institutions but also national and international programs will be exhibited, providing an opportunity for many up-and-coming researchers to present their work to a diverse audience. The proceedings of the symposium will be disseminated to the scientific community and to the general public in four ways. First, there is an evening lecture on the first day that is open to the general public and thus is a means of introducing the subject of the symposium to a very general audience. Second, all symposia are archived on the CBC website, including presentation transcripts and speaker abstracts, bios, and publication lists; this year podcasts of all of the talks will be posted. Information on the availability of these materials will then be disseminated widely, with a distribution plan that includes local high schools and undergraduate institutions. The New York metropolitan area is one of the country's most ethnically diverse regions; there are at least 30 public and private secondary education institutions in the region whose minority enrollments range from 31 to 100%. Third, the diverse topics that are being brought together in this symposium will be merged into an edited volume. Finally, the CBC's Spring Symposia typically attract members of the local, national, and international media who report on the information that is shared in the symposium talks and posters, again, taking the message back to the general public.