Summer 2026
 
The International Biogeography Society Newsletter

 
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News from the Board...
-Nicholas Gotelli
TIBS President-Elect
 

The TIBS board is meeting monthly as we make plans for future meetings and workshops. These plans are being informed by the results of our recent TIBS members survey (n = 84 responses).

Highlights of the survey results include:
  • 71% of respondents think TIBS meetings should be held on university campuses to keep costs low, even though that could potentially limit maximum attendance.

  • 44% of respondents would consider meeting on an annual basis (we currently meet biannually).

  • 75% of respondents favored the re-instatement of more thematically focused off-year meetings.
 In their comments, members consistently praised the TIBS meetings for their congeniality, relatively small size, high quality of keynote presentations, and the chance to meet and network with other biogeographers and macroecologists. Areas that members suggested might be evaluated going forwards are the costs of the meetings, the timing of a January Biennial meeting, and the number of concurrent parallel sessions.

MEMBER SURVEY
Summary of TIBS members survey
The board of TIBS is very pleased to received this detailed feedback from the membership. We will be closely studying these responses as we plan future TIBS meetings, workshops, and other events.
 
n = 84 responses  |  ■ Yes  ■ No  ■ No Opinion
1. Would you be willing to pay more to have the event livestreamed?
Yes 15%
  
No 85%
  
2. Would you be willing to pay more to have the event recorded?
Yes 14%
  
No 86%
  
3. How many days of talks would be optimal?
 3 days
4. How many invited keynote plenary speakers do you think is optimal?
 4 speakers
5. What is the optimal length of the plenary keynote talks?
 30 minutes
6. Should symposia be invited by a scientific committee or proposed by ad hoc groups of members?
Members 38%
  
Committee 15%
  
No Opinion 47%
  
7. How many symposia should be organized?
 3 symposia
8. Length of contributed individual talks?
 15 minutes
9. What is the quality of posters at recent conferences?
 4 (out of 5)
10. Should poster presenters be given 1 min on stage to explain the key message from their poster?
Yes 36%
  
No 59%
  
No Opinion 5%
  
11. Should conferences be held on university campuses to keep venue costs low, but potentially limiting maximum attendance?
Yes 71%
  
No 24%
  
No Opinion 5%
  
12. Catering is usually the biggest cost. Should breaks be limited to drinks only?
Yes 40%
  
No 57%
  
No Opinion 3%
  
13. Should lunch be provided each day (which will increase the registration fee)?
Yes 63%
  
No 32%
  
No Opinion 5%
  
14. Should all catering be vegan/vegetarian?
Yes 42%
  
No 53%
  
No Opinion 5%
  
15. We currently meet biannually (once every two years). Would you consider attending if the meetings were annual?
Yes 44%
  
No 52%
  
No Opinion 4%
  
16. Would you support the re-instatement of more thematically focused off-year meetings?
Yes 75%
  
No 20%
  
No Opinion 5%
  

UPCOMING EVENTS
Funk Biogeography Seminar Series:
July 29, 2026
The next Funk Biogeography Seminar will take place on July 29th! Our speaker this month is Dr. Mark Costello from Nord University. Click the button below to learn more and register!
 

Also, preview the speakers for future seminars:
August 26
 
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
September 30
University of Alberta, Canada

HIGHLIGHTED PAPER
The maturity of marine biodiversity maps: insights from the convergence
of global patterns.
 
Shogo Ikari - PhD Candidate
University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan
About the study: Using over 30 million occurrence records from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), we quantified the convergence of biodiversity knowledge across 13 marine taxonomic groups representing different stages of knowledge maturity. Species richness and latitudinal diversity patterns generally stabilized with increasing data, whereas rarity-weighted species richness remained inconsistent. Higher convergence was associated with greater data accumulation and weaker correlations between record density and mapped species richness, reflecting saturation in species discovery, and varied among taxonomic groups according to their biogeographic characteristics and commercial importance.

What do you consider to be the most significant finding of this study?
"An important finding of this study is that convergence proved to be an effective indicator for evaluating the reliability of biodiversity patterns mapped from incomplete and spatially biased data. The developed framework can be viewed as a spatial extension of rarefaction approaches, which have traditionally been used to assess sampling sufficiency at individual sites."
 
What was the most surprising result?
"We found that biases (spatial sample unevenness) in species occurrence records themselves did not directly affect information convergence. Furthermore, convergence increased as the correlation between the number of occurrence records and species richness across grid cells became weaker. This suggests an empirical relationship linking local information saturation to the convergence of large-scale biodiversity patterns."
 
Why are you particularly interested in this group of organisms?
"The taxonomic groups were selected primarily to represent a gradient of knowledge maturity across different groups. We focused on marine realm, where biodiversity data are especially biased across both space and time."
 
What led you to this study, and did the direction of the project change as it progressed?
"We focused on global biodiversity patterns because they constitute one of the most important forms of information in macroecology, underpinning a wide range of applications from knowledge generation/hypothesis testing on processes driving biodiversity to spatial conservation planning. We initially focused solely on patterns of species richness. However, to clarify that different dimensions of biodiversity can exhibit distinct convergence behaviors, we also included rarity-based metrics in the analysis."
 
What was the most challenging problem you had to solve?
"A major challenge was designing an approach that could be applied consistently across multiple taxonomic groups. Equally difficult was structuring the study in a way that made clear to readers that our goal was not to produce the most accurate biodiversity maps possible, but to investigate how convergence behaves as a characteristic of biodiversity knowledge itself."
 
How does this work fit into your broader research interests?
"Spatial representations of biodiversity constitute a cornerstone of macroecology and biogeography. In a discipline inherently constrained by incomplete information, directly evaluating the reliability of inferred patterns, rather than focusing solely on the completeness of the underlying data, offers a perspective that can be valuable across a wide range of research areas."
 
How did this collaboration among the authors come about?
"This paper formed a major component of my PhD project and was developed through discussions with my supervisor and a lab member who co-authored the paper. Notably, we are also co-founders of a company that applies biodiversity analytics to business decision-making. As such, the study was partly motivated by challenges encountered in real-world business applications of biodiversity information, and these perspectives are reflected in the study."
 
What are you working on next?
"Applying this framework to assess the reliability of biodiversity patterns at regional scales will be considerably more challenging, as temporal variation in the patterns themselves must also be taken into account. To address this challenge, it may be valuable to extend the concept of knowledge convergence beyond mapped biodiversity patterns and apply it to higher-order biodiversity shortfalls, such as our understanding of species' responses to climate change and other ecological processes."

Opportunities
 
Get involved with TIBS and find out about other opportunities in the world of biogeography!
The International Biogeography Society Education Committee
We are looking for 5-8 people to serve on the TIBS Education Committee! Members across all career stages are welcome to join.

Interested persons should contact Michelle Lawing (alawing@nulltamu.edu) for more information.
 
Conference:
Tectonic and Geomorphic Connections to Biodiversity
Monte Verità, Switzerland | 12 - 16 September, 2026
Please note the upcoming conference on Tectonic and Geomorphic Connections to Biodiversity, to be held On Sept 12 to 16 in Ascona, Switzerland. This will be a three day, focused meeting in an exclusive, full-facility site. We still have some places available.

For more information or to register, click here.
 
Postdoctoral Researcher Position
Yale University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Join a cross-disciplinary team in investigating how geological dynamics, climate, and biotic interactions jointly shape biodiversity in mountains, with a focus on squamate reptiles.

Click here to view the full position details. Additionally, see the flyer below:

GET INVOLVED
Call for Workshop Proposals
We are seeking proposals for technical training workshops on methods and approaches important in biogeographic research. Workshops should take place between October 1, 2026, and November 30, 2027. Workshops could be held virtually, in-person, or as a combination of these options. We encourage virtual workshops, as they tend to attract broader participation across institutions and countries. To reduce screen fatigue and support effective learning, online workshops should be divided into multiple 2-hour sessions, ideally spread across several days.

TIBS will provide between 500 and 1000 USD in financial support to the organizers of chosen workshops, assuming that workshops have a minimum of 20 attendees, with attendance fees to be determined between the TIBS board of directors and the organizer(s). Funds may be used at the organizer's discretion, including as an honorarium. TIBS will manage all registration and payment logistics.

Workshops can be proposed on any topic relevant to biogeography.
Some past workshops were:

  • Spatial/Phylogenetic Analysis in Macroecology
  • Species Distribution Modeling
  • BioGeoBEARS
  • Communicating Biogeography
  • Visualizing Evolution in Time and Space
  • Biogeography of Stress
  • Biodiversity Informatics
  • Bayesian Statistical Analysis
  • Integrating and Cleaning
    Biodiversity Data
  • Intro to Network Analysis
  • Analyzing Paleoecological Data
Some past workshop topics:
TABS • Wallace• DarwinCore • TrenchR
Workshop proposals should include the following information:
1. Name, institution and email of organizer(s). Please delegate a single organizer as the point of contact
2. Suggested date of workshop
3. Title of workshop
4. Workshop outline (<600 words) including:
  • Depth of knowledge needed by attendees/target audience
  • Level of detail of workshop
  • Maximum number of people in workshop (if it needs capping)
  • Mode of organization; if physical: room/power requirements
Workshops will be approved on a first come first served basis. Later submissions may be asked to adjust the dates and/or times of day to avoid overlap with already approved workshops.
 
Please send proposals for workshops by email to Mark Costello, VP for Conferences, mark.j.costello@nullnord.no by 30 August 2026. Expressions of interest are also welcome at this time.

FRONTIERS OF BIOGEOGRAPHY
Call for Editors


Would you like to become an editor for
Frontiers of Biogeography, the scientific journal of
The International Biogeography Society?

 The journal is seeking new editors to join the existing international team of editors and, in particular, invites members (past or current) of TIBS to contact the editor in chief, Robert Whittaker (robert.whittaker@nullouce.ox.ac.uk), with expressions of interest by 20th July.

 The journal, which is fully owned by TIBS, was launched in 2009 and transitioned to the Pensoft, ARPHA platform in 2024. It is a fully Open Access journal and it currently has a Clarivate WoS impact factor of 2.4, and a Scopus CiteScore of 5.7. Both TIBS and Pensoft are keen to develop the journal further to become a natural home for biogeographers to publish their work, embracing all major schools of thought and categories of biogeographical science, with the rigour expected from the publication of a learned society. To that end, we are keen to expand the existing editorial board, adding to the existing portfolio of subject editor expertise, while fostering diversity across geographic regions, schools of thought, and demographic backgrounds, recognizing that a broad range of perspectives strengthens both the journal and the discipline.
Editors help shape the journal both through their engagement in the review process and in encouraging submissions and special (‘topical’) issues. If you have an active interest in the review and evaluation process, and experience relevant to the role, please do get in touch.

We're pleased to share that Frontiers of Biogeography has received a Scopus CiteScore of 5.7 for 2025! The journal retains its Q1 ranking and 2.4 Journal Impact Factor.

Considering Frontiers of Biogeography for your next publication?
Learn more about us at biogeography.pensoft.net.
Looking for a place to share your work in biogeography?
PUBLISH WITH US!
 
Frontiers of Biogeography is the journal of
The International Biogeography Society.
 
All taxa and all branches
of biogeography are welcome.
 
Visit biogeography.pensoft.net
to view more articles!
 
International - Peer reviewed - Open access - 2.4 Impact factor
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