Hello! My name is Valentin, and I am currently a researcher in the Mathematical Biology Lab at Kyushu University.

I recently had the opportunity to present part of my research at the International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB 2025), held in Brisbane, Australia in June.

I was invited to speak in a session focused on [session Synthesis approaches to address terrestrial biodiversity loss under land-use change: bridging societal challenges and conservation management], where I presented a project exploring the interplay between conservation and human behavior. More specifically in this project we explored with my collaborators (C. Petit-Cailleux and E. Dagorn) the implication of human population behavior to implement more or less protected areas. Indeed, human behavior is an important aspect that is usually missing when we are thinking about biodiversity protection (we usually believe that economic wealth or political stability are for example the most important factor that could explain implementation of protected areas – or other studies rather explore the effect of biodiversity on human biodiversity. But we found that the answer is more complex). The session led to fascinating discussions with researchers from diverse fields, including economics and biodiversity policy. Later, with all the speakers we went out for dinner— a great chance to exchange ideas not only about science but also about our experiences as researchers from different parts of the world.

The next day, I presented a poster on fruit production decline in tropical forests in the general poster session, a work done by A. Hacket-Pain and collaborators, including me and Akiko Satake. We are far to know everything about fruit production, and most data on tropical forests are usually coming limited to few plots (such as Barro Colorado Island in Panama or Luquillo in Puerto Rico), and it can then be difficult to make extra polation to other forests. Another theme that emerged was the connection between reduction of fruit availability and human-wildlife conflict — in regions where fruit is a critical resource, scarcity could increase the competition between animals and people. This project was also a way to highlight the importance of long-term ecological monitoring. Detecting trends in fruit production requires long term data collection, which in turn requires both time and financial support — something we often take for granted (and that is not, or can be sometimes biased toward famous plots already monitored)

The conference was a nice opportunity to meet previous and new collaborators. It was sometimes difficult to choose which session to go. Rather than going everywhere, I am trying to chose the session that would fit most of my interest (and it can be very difficult when you have two session you want to go, but are exactly at the same time), so then I chose which one could be the most useful or interesting for me. Also, I am happy to learn or discover new research topics. I was for example following some talks related to marine biodiversity, monitoring methods. I have been for example in a session “Where are all the Women? Pathways towards gender balance in Conservation Leadership”. Why women are never are missing in leardership positions!? It was a great opportunity, as a man, to hear all women voices. I know that I will never face the same difficulties, and it is a good reminder to know that you are, as a man, privileged. So next time a women is telling you that she is struggling, please never say you are also struggling and listen actively, because you have a lot to learn.

For the closing ceremony we got the opportunity to have a drink in the Natural History Museum. A nice opportunity to share a glass of wine with a dinosaur, even if they were super shy, it is still super impressive. It is also an opportunity again to talk with other international scientists, even if it is a bit intimidating at the beginning, most people I met there were super kind.

Lastly, since Australia is quite far from Japan, I also took the opportunity to reflect on the carbon footprint of attending an international conference. I believe it’s important for us as researchers to be mindful of the environmental cost of academic travel. The carbon emissions associated with this trip are estimated at 14,000 km which is equivalent to ~ 2 tons of CO₂ (it depends of the calculation, here most websites I tried estimated arround 2tCO₂). As a comparison, because most of us don’t know what does it mean, it is like eating 4000kg of strawberries, watching 66,000 Game of Thrones episodes, 580kg of Cheese pizza or 25 smartphones. Of course it will depends what kind of strawberries, which episodes from GoT etc., but it is a general idea.

For the references if you want to know more about our posters, this one about fruit decline in the tropics https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/7946/ and this one about human behavior and protected areas https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/eg78h_v1

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