We aim to provide a broad symposium for researchers interested in all aspects of biotic interactions. We are open to projects including, but not limited to, species interactions, ecological networks, competition and co-existence, co-evolution, and the human impact on these different processes. We will particularly highlight some projects in which data are collected at different international sites and collaborators work together towards joint understanding. For example, some presentations will show how shared protocols in vegetation plots, or camera-traps, have led to large-scale projects and unexpected discoveries. We believe that this would be particularly exciting for audience members to see how they can be involved in larger, global-scale projects. At the same time, we welcome all presentations, including those that are not international, or are in planning stages. Our goal is to encourage researchers to present projects on emerging innovative methods and approaches that transcend geographical boundaries and embrace a global perspective.

In the proposal we include seven presentations, including two that represent international teams working in Africa. It also includes a variety of taxa: mammals have the greatest number of talks (four), followed by invertebrates (three talks), and then birds (one talk) and plants (one talk). We have two talks by PhD students, several by young researchers (i.e. Assistant Professors), and several by more senior researchers. However, we design the symposium to be a wide topic that many researchers could sign up for at the time that they submit their abstracts. We are also open to taking other community ecology related talks (such as those that investigate species diversity) into the seminar if such presenters cannot find a suitable symposium. If a large number of researchers were to sign up for the symposium, we would try to organize sessions based on themes (taxa, phenomena, methods), while mixing together researchers from different backgrounds (discipline, career stages, geography, gender).