Under the general framework of Global Change Ecology, the goal of this course is to provide the participants with the most recent and practical knowledge on the use of Functional Diversity. This includes the selection of functional traits and calculation of Functional Diversity Indexes. Examples of the application of this knowledge will be given regarding Ecological Indicators and Ecosystem Services.

Date: January 15th, 2018 to January 19th, 2018
Deadline for Applications: December 15th, 2017

Evolutionary theory provides a framework for understanding all living systems. Nevertheless, throughout the 20th century, with a few exceptions, evolutionary biologists have “avoided” using evolution to address problems related to our own species. EvoS is a program created by David Sloan Wilson at the University of Binghamton, and later adopted at other faculties that have joined into the EvoS international consortium. EvoS aims at turning evolutionary theory into a common language to areas that pertain to the natural world, including human affairs.

Objectives: To introduce participants to the details of communicating science to non-specialized audiences, including, but not exclusive to, public and private stakeholders, students and teachers, and media professionals. The course will particularly address the design, organisation, implementation and impact assessment of public engagement activities such as exhibitions, science festivals or games. At the end of the course, students should be able to develop and produce small-budget events or products to communicate scientific results and ideas.

Natural history museums are privileged spaces for seminal research on different subjects of biological sciences such as biodiversity, evolution, ecology, biogeography and taxonomy. This crucial role is due to the fact that they represent biological diversity repositories becoming huge libraries of information on Earth living organisms. The long-term sampling through various decades renders tonatural history collections an historic perspective that allows reconstructing a “memory”, sometimes secular, of natural patterns and processes.

There are thousands of totally sequenced genomes freely available in the Internet. The number keeps on growing as at least one genome sequence is released every day. Large-scale sequencing requires bioinformatics analysis, whose algorithms will be the aim of this course, and that underlie the generation of reliable databases. Algorithms are also the basis of reliable sequence databases generation. An intelligent analysis of these databases allows the extraction of information and scientific knowledge.

Por Maria C. Caldeira (Centro de Estudos Florestais, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa).

A diversidade biológica, em todas as suas formas e níveis de organização, garante importantes serviços ecológicos dos quais, em última instância, depende o bem-estar humano. A Ecologia elucida as intricadas relações entre seres vivos, o meio abiótico que os rodeia, e as funções que desempenham nos ecossistemas, contribuindo assim para informar acerca das consequências que alterações nos equilíbrios da natureza podem ter para a humanidade.

Maria do Carmo Barreto
Assistant Professor (IERS Group)