This document provides an overview of ecology in Southeast Asian nations presented by Dr. Mark McGinley, a Fulbright visiting scholar at the University of Malaya. It discusses opportunities and challenges for ecologists in SE Asia, including high biodiversity but many poorly studied species. It emphasizes building talents through collaboration and a modern "collaborative, long-term studies" approach. Funding, policy support, and bridging ideas to the public and policymakers are also addressed as important for ecological research.

1. Ecology in ASEAN Nations:
Bridging Ideas, Building Talents
Dr. Mark A. McGinley
Fulbright Visiting Scholar, University of Malaya
Associate Professor
Honors College and Department of Biological Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas USA
mark.mcginley@ttu.edu

2. Outline
 Introduce myself
 Quick history of ecology
 Opportunities and challenges facing ecologists in
SE Asia
 Building Talents
 Bridging Ideas

3. About Me
 I have conducted research in behavioral,
evolutionary, and community ecology of birds,
mammals, and plants.
 Been a faculty member at Texas Tech University
since 1991

4. Science Education
 MS2
 Masters Degree to teach middle school teachers (grades
6 – 8) how to integrate math and science in the
classroom.
 Funded by $3 million (US) grant
 http://www.ttumssquare.org/
 Malaysian Bat Education Adventure
 Collaboration between colleagues in Department of
Biological Sciences, and Colleges of Education and
Mass Communications
 Use biology of Malaysian bats as the focus for
developing and integrated science curriculum for grades
4 – 8.
 http://www.ttu-mbea.org/

5. Informal Science Education
 Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE)
 http://www.eoearth.org/
 Goal is to be the largest on-line source of
information about the environment in the world.
 All articles written by scholars, all articles undergo
peer review.

6. Teaching Ecology in the Field

7. What Am I Doing Here?
• Fulbright Visiting Scholar, UM
• Fulbright Program
– Funded by U.S. government
– Encourage understanding by facilitating
exchange of scholars between U.S. and
abroad
• Professors/professionals and students
• http://www.cies.org/about_fulb.htm
– I arrived in June and will remain until April
• Taught “Special Topics in Ecology and Biodiversity”
at UM
• Malaysia Collection for EoE, Ecology Textbook

9. History of Ecology
“Revolutions” in the 1960s
1. Use of controlled manipulative
experiments in the field
– Joseph Connell and Robert Paine
• Pioneered the use of manipulative controlled
ecological experiments.

10. History of Ecology
“Revolutions” in the 1960s
2. Use of mathematics to generate
ecological theory
-Robert MacArthur and colleagues

11. Something to Think About!
• Looking back on my career, if I could do
one thing over to make myself a better
ecologist then I would have learned more
math!!!!
– Theory
– Modeling tools
– Statistical analyses

12. What did “Old School” ecology
teach us?
Interactions are complex
– Abiotic and biotic factors important
– Combination of direct and indirect interactions
– Interactions can take a long time to express
themselves
– Can increase progress if we allow ecological
theory to guide our investigations

13. More Modern Approach
1980s – today
“CLS”
• Work in Collaborative teams
– Bring a variety of expertise together
• Conduct Long-term studies
• Synthesize what we have learned
• Search for generalities

14. Long Term Ecological Studies in
Tropical Rainforests
• Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
– Field site located in Barro Colorado Island
(BCI) in Gatung Lake in the Panama Canal

15. BCI 50 Hectare Plot
• BCI intensively studied since 1923
• Flora well known
• 50 hectare Forest Dynamics Plot established in 1980.
• Census every tree and shrub > 1 cm in diameter at breast
height
• 1982 census - 240,000 stems of 303 species of trees and
shrubs
• Recensused every 5 years
• Robin Foster and Steven Hubbell
• http://www.ctfs.si.edu/data/pdf/CTFSbook_PDF/BCIchapt.pdf

16. BCI 50 Hectare Plot
• Many important papers have been based
on research conducted at this site.
– Often published in Science, Nature, and
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, Ecology & Ecological Monographs

17. Center For Tropical Forest
Science

18. CLS Approach Required Some
Fundamental Changes
• Funding
– Although ecological research is much cheaper
than molecular biology, large-scale ecological
studies still require significant funding
– Need to fund collaborations
– If scientists are going to undertake long-
term studies then they need to be confident
that funding will be available
– Funding for synthesis

19. Funding For Ecological Research in
the U.S.
 Most funding for basic research comes form the
National Science Foundation (NSF)
 Federal Government
 1. Long Term Ecological Research program
 (LTER)
 2. National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
 (NCEAS)

20. Long Term Ecological Research
(LTER)
• US LTER Network
• Funds groups of scientists to work
together over long time periods.
– The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER)
Network established in 1980
– 26 LTER sites
– 1800 scientists/students
– http://www.lternet.edu/

21. International Long Term Ecological
Research Network- ILTER
 40 members in the  Pacific and Asia
ILTER network • Australia
• China
• Japan
• Korea
• Mongolia
• Taiwan
• Thailand

22. Synthesis
 The NCEAS mission is to:
 Advance the state of ecological knowledge through
the search for general patterns and principles in
existing data
 Organize and synthesize ecological information in a
manner useful to researchers, resource managers,
and policy makers addressing important
environmental issues
 http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/

23. NCEAS
 Form “working groups”
 10 visiting scientists
 Groups of scientists spend one or two weeks in
Santa Barbara examining questions of interest.
 Examples of topics of working groups-
 Ecological response to climate change
 Effectiveness of marine preserves
 Temperate-tropical gradient in species richness
 Effects of introduced species

24. NCEAS
 Since its founding in 1995
 400 projects involving over 4000 visiting scientists
 Over 1800 publications
 Many in journals with the highest impact factors
 http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/products
 Ranked as the 22nd /38,000 environmental institutes
worldwide in impact of its publications

25. Importance of Ecology in
South East Asia
• Obviously, better understanding of ecology
and environmental issues is critically
important to the future sustainable
development of South East Asia.
• We know a lot more about ecological
interactions and the importance of
biodiversity than we did when the United
States was in a similar stage of economic
development
– Please don’t make the same mistakes we have!!!

26. Llano Estacado Today

27. Opportunities and Challenges
Facing South East Asian Ecologists
• Much greater biodiversity in the tropics
than in the temperate regions
– True for terrestrial, aquatic, and marine
ecosystems

28. Opportunities and Challenges
Facing ASEAN Ecologists
– Opportunity
– Interesting systems, full of cool species
– poorly studied
– Understanding tropics key issue in ecology
– Challenge
– Lots of species to know
– difficult to be a “casual” worker in a system

29. Opportunities and Challenges
 Systematics
 Still new species to be discovered and classified
 Natural History
 Still need to learn about the basic biology of most
species
 Modern ecology can not exist without building on
work of taxonomists, systematists, and natural
historians.
 Who is training the next generation of taxonomists?
 National and regional need!

30. Opportunities
 Urban Ecology
 a subfield of ecology which deals with the
interaction between organisms in an urban or
urbanized community, and their interaction with that
community.

31. CLS Aproach in South East Asia
• Collaborative, long-term efforts will be
useful
• Established LTER sites could provide
background and logistical support
needed to foster research
• Synthesis could be valuable
• Basic questions
• Environmental issues

32. Where Will Funding Come From?
 Governments
 Are governments really interested in supporting research that
leads to a better understanding of the environment?
 In the U.S. we have seen funding depend on politics!
 Governments often has short-term perspective
 Corporations
 NGOs/Foundations
 Universities
 Governments, foundations, and general public will
only support funding for ecological and environmental
research if we make compelling arguments for why
this research is valuable!
 We need to deliver this message!!

33. CLS Approach
 Requires Universities and other research groups to
support collaborative, long-term research efforts
 Might require changes in organization, hiring, reward,
promotion systems
 Governments may need to help facilitate interaction
among local and international scholars
 Encourage travel and exchange
 May require efforts beyond single governments and
require a regional approach
 Consortiums of Universities and research units
 CU, NUS, and UM could sponsor annual
synthesis meeting?
 ASEAN?

34. Building Talents of South East
Asian Ecologists
• Characteristics
– Generalist
• Systematics, natural history, and
ecology (including ecological theory
and statistics)
• Comfortable using tools from
related fields
– Specialist
• Might need to specialize on a
limited taxonomic group or specific
region

35. Building Talents
• You will need to be “better” than scientists in the
previous generation and your peers in the West!
• Work harder, work smarter!
• Find your niche
• Typically are best at what you enjoy the most
• Always present your work in context of relevant theory
• READ!!!
• Have to be familiar with the best scientific literature to
conduct the best scientific research
• PRESENT and PUBLISH!!!
• “publish and prosper”
• Aim for the broadest audience that you can

36. Building Talents
Possible Career Path
HI*
Time/Expertise
Publish major
“synthetic”papers
Become “mature expert”
HI* results in
Publish
Secure funding new areas
Search for opportunities
HI*
Publish results that
Attract collaborators
Inform ecological
theory
Secure funding
Search for opportunities
Publish systematics
Gain “expertise” in your system
Publish natural history
Publish species lists
HI - High Impact

37. Bridging Ideas
• Collaboration with other scientists is
critical
– Local and international scientists
– Probably great potential future
collaborators sitting in this room!
• Must be able to bridge basic and applied
research
• Embrace new technology, but use it
appropriately

38. Bridging Ideas
• Form bridges with policy makers and the general
public.
• Advocates for the environment
– Be a reliable and trustworthy source of accurate
information about the environment for citizens and
perhaps more importantly, for policy makers.
– Ecologists in the US are often marginalized as “tree
huggers”
• We have not done a good job of educating the US public
– Science
– Environment

39. Bridging Ideas
Knowledge from other fieldsfields
Knowledge from other of scienc
You
Knowledge of
your
Knowledge of
ecological Knowledge of
your system environmental
system
issues
Knowledge of
general General public
ecological and
theory policy makers

40. Bridging Ideas, Building Talents
HI*
Inform General Public?
Time/Expertise
Publish major
“synthetic”papers
Become “mature expert”
HI* results in
Publish
Secure funding new areas
Search for opportunities
HI*
Publish results that
Attract collaborators Inform ecological
theory
Secure funding
Search for opportunities
Publish systematics
Gain “expertise” in your system
Publish natural history
Publish species lists
HI - High Impact

41. Bridging Ideas
support
You
Knowledge of
your
Knowledge of
ecological Knowledge of
your system environmental
system
issues
Knowledge of
general General public
and Good
ecological
policy makers decisions
theory

42. Charles Darwin
“I trust and believe that the time spent in this
voyage … will produce its full worth in Natural
History; and it appears to me the doing what little
one can to increase the general stock of
knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as
one can in any likelihood pursue.”

43. Thanks
 Texas Tech University
 U.S. Department of State
 Institute of Biological Sciences at University of
Malaya
 Conference organizing committee