KIGALI — When scientists, conservationists and policymakers from around the world gathered in East Africa this July — exchanging ideas, celebrating successes and planning for the future — the international group represented a living showcase of the dramatic transformations in tropical ecology research that has occurred over the last 60 years. Founded in 1963 by a group of 32 men — mostly white, mostly from the U.S. — and just one woman, the Association for Tropical Biology focused primarily on advancing Neotropical botanical science. A 2003 name change to the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation reflected the expansion of that mission to include tropical conservation. With 1,000 members in 70 nations today, the professional society’s international membership represents an increasingly diverse roster of scientists from the Global North, tropical Latin America, Africa and Asia, with expertise in everything from carnivores to climate change. Participants in a workshop at the ATBC’s 2024 conference in Kigali discuss issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in tropical field science. Image courtesy of the ATBC. The roots of tropical ecology The ATBC was born at the height of the Cold War, a time of intense global geopolitical upheaval. It was also an era in which the study of tropical ecology still heavily reflected the legacy of the 19th-century colonial period, when jungle collections gathered by European and U.S. explorers attracted the interest of scientists who mostly viewed tropical organisms from afar, and as strange but worth learning about. In 1898, at the end of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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