Micro-climate workshop

12-15 September Phillipa Gillingham and Isobel Bramer organised a workshop on the study of micro-climates. It was attended by people from the Leverhulme-funded Micro-climate Network that LEAP's Matt Nowak, Ross Hill and myself are part of. It was amazing to discuss with experts from around the world about how to collect micro-climate data, what to do with it, how to improve research on micro-climates and how important micro-climates might be for understanding species' responses to climates change.

We hope the resulting discussion will soon lead to a review paper, which is already in progress.

I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed meeting everybody and how important I think it is to be part of this network.

The Friday involved discussions with a larger group as part of a British Ecological Society's Climate Change Ecology Special Interest Group workshop. We asked delegates to define 'micro-climate' and various other questions about the current state of and constraints on micro-climate research. This will all feed into the review article but needless to say that it was difficult even to reach a clear consensus on the definition.

I do think that micro-climates are very important also in influencing primate habitat use and sleep...