Coinciding with the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Professor Ramón Margalef, we held the 1st Iberian Ecological Society Meeting. The conference was the kickoff of SIBECOL (Sociedad Ibérica de Ecología) a new scientific society, joining ecologists from Iberian countries, whatever the system or approach they work on. The Asociación Española de Ecología Terrestre (AEET), the Asociación Ibérica de Limnologia (AIL), the Sociedad Española de Etología y Ecología Evolutiva (SEEEE) and the Sociedade Portuguesa de Ecologia (SPECO), as well as a group of Iberian Marine Ecologists, support this initiative. The conference concurred with the XIV AEET Meeting.

The motto of this event was "Ecology: an integrative science in the Anthropocene". The conference addressed the great transdisciplinary and integrative background of Ecology. The objective of the conference was to highlight those crosscutting ecological concepts shared by the different branches of this discipline (limnology, marine ecology, terrestrial ecology, theoretical ecology), regardless of the study system. We sought to exchange ideas and approaches that are common to different specialties in Ecology, and provided a platform to discuss how ecological sciences can help to deal with the huge environmental transformations induced by human societies.

The general themes addressed were: Biogeography and macroecology, Biological invasions, Biotic interactions and ecosystem functioning, How Ecology serves the Society: services and nature-based solutions, Microbial ecology and many other topics disccused in thematic sessions.

In addition, 11 workshops were held, dealing with specific knowledge or skills in the use of auxiliary technology tools in order to improve quantitative and qualitative research methods. They involved extended discussion as well as hands-on training sessions. Furthermore, with the desire to cultivate the best in the next generation of researchers in ecology, we organized an orientation and mentoring program in which early career researchers (undergraduate,master students or PhD candidates) shared experiences with sennior researchers in order to help young researchers to navigate throughout the SIBECOL conference experience.

This meeting was attended by 690 participants. A total of 570 contributions were presented: 9 plenary talks, 21 main talks, 371 oral standard talks and 169 posters, all collected in the book of abstracts of the meeting.

Download here the 1st SIBECOL meeting ABSTRACT BOOK in pdf format
Download here the 1st SIBECOL meeting ABSTRACT BOOK in epub format