About the talk

Tropical Asia is home to a rich assemblage of terrestrial megafauna. Large herbivores and carnivores that play key roles in ecosystem function and have intense — both positive and negative — interactions with people. I will do a brief introduction to megafauna ecology and conservation in Tropical Asia, with a focus on our research group's work, whereby we combine animal behavior, plant ecology, landscape ecology, social studies, and other approaches to promote megafauna conservation and coexistence with local communities.

About the speaker

Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz is a tropical conservation ecologist, who studies the behavior, ecology, and conservation of Asian megafauna, particularly elephants. His main research interests are (1) megafauna’s ecological roles in ecosystem function and (2) promoting evidence-based strategies for human-wildlife coexistence. Ahimsa serves as Professor and Principal Investigator at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden and the Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He obtained his PhD from the University of Tokyo (2009) and served as postdoc at the National University of Singapore (2009-2011), and as faculty at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia (2011-2020). He has published around 100 academic papers that have been cited ~ 5000 times. Ahimsa is the founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Integrative Conservation; he was President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and of the Asian Section of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB-Asia). He is or has been member of three IUCN SSC Specialist Groups (Elephants, Tapirs, and Human-Wildlife Conflicts and Coexistence).