Day 6--ATBC day 1

Today is the first day of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) conference with the first set of talks beginning at 10am (a little later than I expected). I spent the majority of my morning (10-12:20) in the Ecology of Seed Dispersal oral sessions and saw some great talks. The morning talks were mostly about bird-mediated seed dispersal and secondary seed dispersal by dung beetles. Interesting, but I would have enjoyed more mammal talks (what can I say…I’m biased!).

Lunch was pretty crazy, but included (each day) in the conference registration fee. I met up with Ana and we waited for ~half an hour (!) in line for sandwiches, salad, cake, and agua de jamaica.

After lunch, I listened to more talks in the second half of the Ecology of Seed Dispersal oral sessions. These talks were nice and more theoretical than this morning’s (which I liked). I also made sure to catch a talk on how seed dispersing bats in the New and Old Worlds affect forest succession--this talk was part of a bat symposium and was given by one of my committee members.

At 4:30pm, the poster session began in the Colegio San Nicolas de Hidalgo and I looked at all the posters for a little less than an hour. I met up for dinner with a group of friends around 6:30pm and I had more tacos before the special event of the evening (organized by ATBC). At 8:30pm, we went to a concert of Latin American music by a group named “Bola Suriana” in the Conservatorio de las Rosas (this is the same room/auditorium where I will give my talk on the last day of the conference!). I didn’t think I would like the concert but I actually did. The group played a variety of songs from many different genres with my favorites being those modeled on the style of indigenous Mexican music. Around 11pm I walked back to the hostel with Ana and Danielle for some sleep--what a busy but great first conference day!