To celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the first publication of The American
Naturalist, there will be a
special symposium at the stand-alone meeting of the American Society of
Naturalists (January 5 - 9,
2018, Asilomar CA, USA). The symposium is titled On the shoulders of giants:
the future of The
American Naturalist. The goal of the symposium will be to show how major
advances published in the
journals history have laid the foundation for exciting new directions in
evolutionary ecology and related
fields. There will be time for six 30-minute talks, each highlighting a
different concept from a classic
American Naturalist paper, and where those ideas are headed next. We want the
talks to place the
original paper into its historic context, trace the subsequent development of
the idea, and (crucially)
show how the classic ideas connect to todays cutting-edge research.
We are requesting proposals for talks. Each proposal should be no more
than 250 words. Proposals
should:
1) Identify what influential paper(s) from The American Naturalists past
will be the starting point of
the talk.
2) Briefly explain how that past paper influenced the direction of the
field generally and the speakers
career in particular.
3) Indicate how the speaker is using / developing / changing that classic
papers ideas in their own
current and future work.
In addition to the 250 word limit, one figure and up to 5 references are
allowed.
Talk proposals should be sent to Daniel Bolnick ([email protected])
by May 1. We expect to
notify chosen speakers by June 1.
We encourage junior researchers (post-docs, early-career faculty) to apply, and
individuals from often
under-represented groups.
The society does not have the funds to pay for travel or lodging expenses of
the chosen speakers. But in
exceptional circumstances ASM may consider appeals to waive conference
registration fees for junior
presenters who lack other means to cover conference costs.
In addition to this symposium, the American Society of Naturalists is
separately seeking proposals for
topics and speakers for two other organized symposia at the 2018 Asilomar
meeting (contact Emilie
Snell-Rood for details, [email protected]).
