Preface: 10th International Symposium on Cladocera, Lednice, Czech Republic
Hydrobiologia
Preface: 10th International Symposium on Cladocera, Lednice, Czech Republic
Adam Petrusek 0
0 A. Petrusek (&) Department of Ecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University , Prague , Czech Republic
The year 2014 was special for the cladocerologist community, as scientists studying cladocerans had two opportunities to meet colleagues at specialized topical meetings focusing on this group of crustaceans, which aspired to attract a really global community. Both conferences took place within less than nine months from each other in Europe. From 19 to 22 January 2014, the campus of the University of Birmingham hosted the EMBO Conference on the ''Mighty Daphnia: Past, Present and Future'', a meeting of the Daphnia Genomics Consortium that was organised by the group of John Colbourne. This meeting had an appealing scientific programme, with nine keynote lectures (not including the hour-long opening talk by John Colbourne himself). No wonder that it attracted a substantial number of scientists involved in Daphnia genomic and evolutionary research, including numerous overseas participants from North America, Japan and China.
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Guest editors: Adam Petrusek & Piet Spaak / Proceedings of
the 10th International Symposium on Cladocera
Later that year—from 28 September to 3 October
2014—the 10th Symposium on Cladocera was
organised in the Czech Republic by the Department of
Ecology, Charles University in Prague. This
Symposium is a triennial international meeting that
traditionally covers all topics related to the biology of
cladocerans, increasingly stressing their use as model
organisms. These topics include cladoceran ecology
and evolutionary biology, host-parasite and predator–
prey interactions, morphology, and diversity, as well
as their biogeography, taxonomy and systematics. The
contributions in this special volume of Hydrobiologia
are a glimpse into the diversity of studies presented at
the symposium.
The anniversary 10th Symposium on Cladocera
returned to Central Europe where the first two
meetings were held (the first in 1986 in Hungary, the
second in 1989 in Slovakia), and we felt that such an
event required a noble setting. Although a ballroom in
a royal castle would be particularly fitting for our
distinguished guests, we finally settled on a room
originally occupied by noble horses—the baroque
riding hall of the Lednice Chateau in south-eastern
Czechia. Lednice is a small town in the heart of the
Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape, a UNESCO
World Heritage area at the border with Austria. The
most well-known attraction of Lednice is the fairy
tale-like chateau with an adjacent vast park styled
according to old Italian and French gardens. A second
noteworthy feature of the chateau complex is the
massive baroque riding hall from the late seventeenth
century, which has survived until today in an almost
unaltered form. In the early 2010s it underwent a
major reconstruction, during which it was converted to
a multifunctional conference, information and
education centre. This spectacular building (Fig. 1), which
had just been opened to the public, hosted the
Symposium as the very first international scientific
conference held at the site. The symposium was
attended by 123 participants (Fig. 1), a real global mix
originating from 31 countries, including distant ones
such as New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, China,
Thailand, the Philippines, Canada and the USA.
Apart from the history and culture, the
LedniceValtice region and adjacent areas are also known for
their vineyards and local wine. The logo of the 10th
Symposium of Cladocera thus merged the tiny
crustaceans that brought scientists from across the globe
with the plant that attracts many other visitors to the
region. A bunch of grapes with a different cladoceran
genus in each berry (Fig. 2) became the symbol that
accompanied symposium participants throughout the
meeting. In addition to the logo, prof. Zdeneˇk Dˇ urisˇ, a
carcinologist from the University of Ostrava, an expert
on the systematics of symbiotic marine shrimps and
my long-time friend, drew a set of lovely caricatures of
various cladocerans that appeared in various
conference materials (Figs. 3, 4).
As is the tradition of SymCla meetings, the whole
symposium was organised in a single session, so the
Fig. 2 Logo of the 10th Symposium of Cladocera (author:
Zdeneˇk Dˇ urisˇ). Representatives of cladoceran genera, from top
to bottom: Leptodora, Bosmina, Moina, Chydorus, Ilyocryptus,
Daphnia, Polyphemus, Scapholeberis, Holopedium
participants could appreciate the diversity of topics in
their entire breath. Kindly accepting our invitations,
keynote presentations were given by two speakers,
Luc De Meester (University of Leuven, Belgium) and
Michael Lynch (Indiana University, Bloomington,
USA). Luc and Mike gave exciting talks, on
‘‘Ecoevolutionary dynamics featuring Daphnia and
cladoceran zooplankton’’ and ‘‘The 5000 Daphnia pulex
Genomes Project’’, respectively. Apart from these, the
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