On days 14, 15 and 16 November 2014, the V Feria de la Biodiversidad was performed in the city of Valdivia. This activity was organized by the Asociación Transdisciplinaria de Estudiantes de la Universidad Austral de Chile (ATRAE), and its main objective was to create a space for science and exhibition of environmental issues addressed the community in general. This year, the event was seen by over 1500 people.
Under the framework of the Project Fondecyt 1140692 “Modelling evolutionary processes that explain the origin and patterns of vertebrates biodiversity in South America: the importance of extrinsic and intrinsic drivers of species diversity”, the Laboratorio de Ecología Evolutiva y Filoinformática, in collaboration with the envorinmental unity of the Departamento de Administración de Educación Municipal de Valdivia (DAEM), were invited to participate in this event. We set up a stand where Erwin M. Barria presented the interactive activity entitled “El paisaje y la comunidad: una relación muy estrecha”. The aim of this initiative was to invite to the assistants to understand how communities of organisms can change their spatial distributions based on topographic changes generated in the landscape. In the stand, attendees had the opportunity to simulate changes in the landscape by modifying the surface characteristics of a bedspread and thus see how these changes affect the patterns of distribution of a number of elements located on the landscape (various types of cereal , grains, and noodles), which pretended to be organisms distributed over the landscape. Previously, we performed a learning workshop with students in fifth and sixth grades belonging to the environmental group of the Escuela El Bosque from Valdivia. Thus, these children participated as monitors, inviting and explaining to the audience the dynamics of this activity.