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| The opportunity to reflect broadly on the accomplishments, prospects, and reach of a field may present
itself relatively infrequently. Each biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society showcases
ideas solicited and developed largely during the preceding year, by individuals or teams from across the
breadth of the discipline. Here, we highlight challenges, developments, and opportunities in biogeography
from that biennial synthesis. We note the realized and potential impact of rapid data accumulation
in several fields, a renaissance for inter-disciplinary research, the importance of recognizing the evolution–
ecology continuum across spatial and temporal scales and at different taxonomic, phylogenetic and
functional levels, and re-exploration of classical assumptions and hypotheses using new tools. However,
advances are taxonomically and geographically biased, and key theoretical frameworks await tools to
handle, or strategies to simplify, the biological complexity seen in empirical systems. Current threats to
biodiversity require unprecedented integration of knowledge and development of predictive capacity
that may enable biogeography to unite its descriptive and hypothetico-deductive branches and establish
a greater role within and outside academia. | |
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