INVESTIGADORES
BORTOLUS alejandro
artículos
Título:
Marine Bioinvasion Research From Over 40 Countries Debated in Patagonia
Autor/es:
ALEJANDRO BORTOLUS; EVANGELINA SCHWINDT
Revista:
SCIENCE
Editorial:
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
Referencias:
Año: 2018
ISSN:
0036-8075
Resumen:
The International Conference on Marine Bioinvasions (ICMB) is a major non-profit forum forexpert scientists and policymakers to push forward the discipline. The Xth edition is celebrated(October 16-18, 2018) for the first time in a Latin American country (Puerto Madryn, Chubut,Patagonia, Argentina), a region suffocated by a scientific crisis caused by a lack of budget andpolitical support that have led, for instance, to the collapse of the Argentina Ministry of Scienceand threatens with first brain-drain in decades (1). Nevertheless, far from decaying, thisPatagonia edition displays a formidable, geographic- and gender-balanced team of keynotespeakers from five continents, the collaboration of researchers from over 40 countries and thesupport of editors and founding editors from prestigious journals like Biological Invasions,Aquatic Invasions, Management of Biological Invasions, and PeerJ. The speakers will lead thedebates by horizon-scanning carefully selected hot-topics like marine world legislation,biosecurity and risk assessment, society and aquaculture, global warming effect on polar seas,vectors and ballast water. In addition to lowering the registration fee, the OrganizingCommittees found Sponsors willing to support travel awards for Early Career Scientists from 6countries worldwide but mostly South American. A great effort was made specifically to favoryoung scientists devoted to marine bioinvasion biology and ecology in the region. However,above all the academic goals we can meet, the major challenge for this Patagonia edition is toincrease the visibility of Marine Biological Invasions across this vast region where the lack ofresearch (2, 3, 4), keeps favoring the making of wrong environmental decisions and commercialactivities that not only involve the deliberate introduction of exotic invasive species -likesalmons, oysters, castors, and algae- but also tend to increase social turmoil regionwide in timeof crisis (4, 5, 6). Politicians, decision makers, and the society of the different nations involved,should understand that supporting bioinvasion scientists and stopping them from leaving theregion, is a solid long-term way out of this multinational problem of dramatic globalconsequences.