1st April 2012 was set as the deadline for early registration and submission of abstracts at ATBC2012 in Bonito, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. However, we were obliged to postpone it to 10th April to ensure that we could welcome a mass migration of humans coming from all around the planet. Indeed, during the last months, we unexpectedly noticed a sudden pulse of registrations by scientists, majoritily from Brazil, the rest coming from 50 different countries in all continents, who decided to establish in Southern Brazil in the next couple of months. One most likely explanation of this massive migration is Climate Change.

It is indeed possibly correlated to the rate of disturbances, due to overhunting, deforestation and fragmentation of tropical rainforests, that of the Amazon in particular, and biodiversity loss, and/or to increased human population or high concentration of Atmospheric Carbon dioxide, all these factors being somehow correlated to each other. By March 2012, watching the tv or reading the News, or simply looking at the thermometer outside the windows, everyones - even the more skeptical ones in the industrial world - started to acknowledge that Climate Change was now a reality. Well-informed scientists and one politician already knew it for decades, and received the Nobel Prize for that in 2007. Thus, 5 years later, and 7 years after the previous ATBC meeting in Brazil, a large number of tropical biologists and conservationists have anticipated by deciding to migrate to Bonito where they knew they will find crystal fresh water, wildlife to observe and to study, and cool climatic conditions in June whereas others will be probably enduring the hottest temperatures ever recorded in centuries.

• Strong evidence" linking extreme heatwaves, floods, and droughts to climate change by Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com - March 28, 2012
• Government policy contributes to huge drop in Amazon deforestation in Brazil by mongabay.com - March 28, 2012

Piraputangas Rio de la Plata in Bonito (Wikipedia)