Abstract booklet - gtö – Society for Tropical Ecology

120 PLENARY KEYNOTE HALL H III: THURSDAY 9:10PARALLEL SESSION HALL H III | HOTSPOT WALLACEA121Keynote speaker: Doyle McKeyChair: Karl WantzenThursday, 24 February, 9:10 | Hall H IIIAGROECOLOGY, RESILIENCE AND TROPICAL BIODIVERSITY: WHATDO PAST AND PRESENT AMAZONIAN FARMERS TELL US?Doyle McKey, CEFE, CNRS, Montpellier, FR, d_mckey@hotmail.comTHURSDAY 9:10 Hall H IIIThe need to reconcile food production, ecosystem services and biodiversityconservation has spurred the search for more sustainable ways of farming.Successful agroecological solutions are likely to be strongly case-specific,so we must cast our net broadly in the hunt for ideas. The folk knowledge ofsmallholder farmers is one source of inspiration for the diverse solutions that willbe needed. Of necessity, these farmers have developed ingenious adaptationsthat do not depend on costly external inputs, that allow long-term use of alimited land base, and that function even in marginal environments. I will firstfocus on one such case, Amerindian farmers of manioc (cassava), to examinethe relevance of their practices for sustainable agriculture today. We can learnnot only from present-day farmers, but also from the “fossil” folk knowledge ofsocieties from the past who employed now-forgotten agricultural techniques.History and prehistory offer many examples of diverse trajectories to agriculturalintensification. By the time depth they offer and the multiplicity of casespermitting a comparative approach, archaeological studies can provide uniqueinsights into the sustainability of agricultural systems, the sources of theirresilience, and their vulnerability. Archaeological and geoarchaeological studiesof pre-Columbian Latin America offer examples of once widely practiced, butnow virtually extinct, agricultural techniques that are considered to have realpotential for contributing to the design of sustainable agroecosystems today.I will focus on two sets of such techniques--farming on terra preta anthrosols,and raised-field agriculture in seasonally flooded wetlands--and examine theirrelevance for the 21st Century.Parallel session | Hall III:HOTSPOT WALLACEA: UNDERSTANDING THE PAST TO SAVE THEFUTUREChairs: Stefan Merker, Sebastian KlausContact: smerker@bio.uni-frankfurt.deNested between two biogeographic realms and isolated from majorlandmasses, Wallacea is not only a melting pot of Asian and Australian faunaand flora but is also characterized by an extraordinary degree of speciesendemism. The session is intended to bring together experts from differentfields of research, e.g. botany, geology, molecular biology or zoology, to shareand discuss insights and ideas on the origin, distribution and dispersal routesof biota across the region. Possible areas of discussion include: tectonic andclimatic events shaping Wallacea’s topography, the phylogeography of modeltaxa, the conservation status of Wallacea’s insular biota; fields of interactionbetween Wallacea researchers.THURSDAY 10:00 Hall H IIIgtöSociety for Tropical Ecology | Gesellschaft für Tropenökologie e.V. Status and future of tropical biodiversity | Frankfurt, 21 - 24 February 2011gtö