Behavioural ecology and conservation biology

Few would deny that behavioural ecology over the past couple of decades has become one of the most important subjects in the whole field of biology. Combining recently revived evolutionary insights with scientific natural history (i.e., ecology) has led to a much deeper understanding of evolutionary and ecological processes and patterns in nature. In essence, the causes and consequences of behavioural mechanisms and their flexibility at the individual level have come to attract a great deal of scientific attention. Gone are the days when one could say, like Reagan, that if you have seen one, you have seen them all. The recognition that individuals are constitutionally different, behave differently and play different roles in their social environment has had and is having a considerable influence on the theory and practice of conservation biology. Behavioural differences among species have come to be viewed as important determinants of the different survival/extinction probabilities of populations under pressure, above all, from anthropogenic habitat perturbations. Conservation biology has developed and undergone a significant refinement as a result of the incorporation of concepts and insights provided by behavioural ecologists. Clearly the rapid advances in this field of biological research have been greatly facilitated as a result of the development of new technology. The adoption of suitably adjusted methods from molecular biology or immunology and many other biosciences offers opportunities for new types of analysis and more precise measurements of important fitness components, also under natural conditions. Since behavioural ecologists tend to be field-workers, they may be even more keenly aware of the ongoing collapse of natural habitats and biological diversity at all levels than many other scientists. Unsurprisingly, many behavioural ecologists wish to put their expertise to use in the efforts to decelerate the current pace of the decline of the biodiversity of the world. Behaviour, more than anything else, is what makes some organisms more and others less susceptible to the environmental calamities wrought by the exploding human population. Estimates vary, but many converge at a thousandfold increase in the rate of species extinction as compared to the times before advanced and widespread technology. The Red Queen thus may have accelerated a thousand times over the past couple of centuries. Unless a species has what it takes to keep her pace, its name will soon be on the species death roll. In this situation, detailed studies of mobility, dispersal, mating systems, feeding habits and the variability of all these and many more components of animals' behavioural repertoires assume a new significance. Such studies may clarify why one species so much better than the next one copes with the sinister array of man-made environmental alterations. The mutual interdependence of behavioural ecology and conservation biology becomes undeniable. To take stock of where we are now, the first Oikos International Symposium was arranged under the title "Behavioural Ecology as a Tool in Conservation Biology". It took place on 6 to 12 September 1995 at the Limnological Field Station at Lake Erken 70 km east of Uppsala an optimal setting for a symposium with a moderate number of participants. Invited speakers gave lectures on a number of important issues, and most of these lectures are published in the following pages of Oikos. Eighteen graduate students from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, representing the future of biological research, contributed short overviews of their ongoing doctoral research projects. Ample time was set aside for informal discussions and was used very energetically indeed. In the organisation committee I was joined by my Department of Zoology colleagues Arne Lundberg, Jacob H6glund and Jan Ekman, while graduate student Christer Hemborg was the committee's indefatigable aide-decamp. I am sure I have the other committee members, the invited speakers and the students behind me when expressing everybody's gratitude to the Nordic Society Oikos for the generous grant enabling us to arrange this productive and stimulating symposium. The series of papers that follow will give readers of Oikos an opportunity of sharing our intellectual fare though missing the American crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus; fitting as an illustration of replacement of real things (Astacus astacus) by surrogates in today's ecosystems) supper that no doubt will linger in participants' memories at least as long as many of the scientific arguments.