This interdisciplinary scientific branch was developed by Prof. Ran Natan from the Hebrew University and its members are representatives from the most important universities in Israel and around the world
"Movement Ecology" is an innovative and developing field of research that combines expertise in various fields such as biology, ecology, botany, environmental sciences, physics, mathematics and virology. This is the first international research group in the field, which began its activities in the coming academic year at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University.
This is a field that was largely developed by a researcher at the Hebrew University, Prof. Ran Natan, who heads the "Movement Ecology" laboratory in the ASA department at the Silverman Institute of Life Sciences. The field examines how substances secreted by plants and animals move from place to place, sometimes even over great distances and in unconventional ways.
Prof. Natan emphasizes that the study of the movement of organisms is central to understanding the way the ecosystem works and this has consequences for human life. A comprehensive understanding of movement as a process will help preserve the existence of a wide variety of plants and animals in their natural environment, adapt to changes resulting from global warming and deal with environmental threats such as infectious diseases, the invasion of foreign species, agricultural pests and the spread of allergens.
Prof. Ran Natan and the field of research were recently recognized in a special edition of the journal Science that dealt with migration and distribution. The journal included an article by Prof. Natan on the topic of seed distribution over long distances.
Also in the edition, a news article focusing on the distribution of plant seeds and animal secretions with a special emphasis on the work of Prof. Natan and his students, as well as other researchers from the USA, England and Australia.
The article notes that researchers have been trying for hundreds of years "to understand when, why and how different species crawl, swim, fly, float or reach new territories. The research led to the mapping of the migration routes and the expansion of knowledge about the distribution," says Prof. Natan.
"However", claims Natan, "some biologists tried to fit these data into the overall picture of movement". And now through the field of research called "ecology of movement", Prof. Natan and other researchers are "beginning to raise empirical hypotheses regarding the mobility of animals, bacteria and even plant seeds. Their goal is to combine empirical work with theories and build models to improve the understanding of movement in the natural world. The researchers are interested in understanding the movement of animals individually or in groups to a few millimeters or in the transition between continents.
The research group currently operating at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University includes participants from the American universities: Berkeley, Davis University in California, Princeton University, Stony Brook University and Rutgers University. Another participant is the Spanish Research Council, and from Israel - the Hebrew University, Ben-Gurion University and the Technion.
In 2005, Prof. Natan received the President's Award for an outstanding young researcher for his innovative research on the distribution of plant seeds. In 2006, he was awarded the prestigious Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany.
