The section of Conservation Ecology is a new one in Center for Ecological Research. The Conservation Ecology is a new research field in Ecology. There are some important differences between "Nature Conservation" and "Conservation Ecology". The former tend to reserve the nature untached, and the latter try to control nature when it is necessary. However, we need deep knowledges about the interaction between nature and human's developing activities. Classic ecology had been good at explaining small spatial-scale phanomena, but poor at large scale ones. However, we need to extend the ecological concept to much wider scale than before, because the scale of human activities are usually much larger than that of our explanatory ability in ecology.

Conservation ecology has been developing from a combined concept of island biogeography and population genetics. However, we need to integrate many more desciplines for deeper understandings of natural world. Behavioral aspects of habitat selection in animals is one I am trying to add to this area. Particulraly, I am interseted in the change of light and thirmal evironments according to deforestation, or forest gap dynamics. Around the age of Convention for Biological Diversity at Rio.

Yoshitaka Tsubaki ⓒ All rights researved.