Biogeographia: a brief historical outline of the Società Italiana di Biogeografia (SIB)

Biogeographia – The Journal of Integrative Biogeography 31 (2016): 1 – 2 Biogeographia: a brief historical outline of the Societa Italiana di Biogeografia (SIB) VALERIO SBORDONI Department of Biology, Universita di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Roma, Italy e-mail corresponding author: valerio.sbordoni@uniroma2.it EDITORIAL On September 1954, during the 27 th Congress of the Unione Zoologica Italiana (UZI), a small group of academic scholars, including one geologist, two botanists and five zoologists, gave rise to a scientific association called “Gruppo Italiano Biogeografi”, literally the Italian group of biogeographers. The team aimed at promoting research in Biogeography, and networking researchers engaged in floristic and faunal studies with emphasis on the Mediterranean Region. Starting from 41 fellows, the membership regularly increased up to 200 fellows through the following decade. Since 1962, the association shifted its denomination into “Societa Italiana di Biogeografia”, SIB, namely the Italian Society of Biogeography, and its main activity was the organization of conferences. For the most part, these conferences focused on the study of the biota of given geographic areas of Italy, or to particular habitat types. By this way the SIB initiated its great role as main organizer of systematic research of the Italian flora and fauna and results of the surveys found place in the journal that, since the year 1970, became the SIB Journal “Lavori della Societa Italiana di Biogeografia”, which in 1984 turned under the name “Biogeographia”. A great merit of the SIB has been its role in encouraging collaborative research of botanists and zoologists, stimulating joint surveys in given geographic areas, since the Executive Board anticipated the location of any conference a few years in advance. Accordingly, the journal has also served for years the main repository of the georeferenced data of biodiversity of Italy and of a few other areas investigated by Italian biogeographers. From 1970 to 2011, 30 volumes have been published focusing on themes like the biota of the main mountain compartments of the Alps and Apennines, Sicily, Sardinia, as well as the small Tyrrhenian archipelagos. Other conference themes included the cave habitat, the inland waters, the coastal areas, and the Mediterranean Sea, the biogeographic consequences of Pleistocene climate. A few conferences with the relative volumes concerned methodological issues. Finally, some