Next year the IUSSI (International Union for the Study of Social Insects) is hosting its meeting in Cairns in Australia. These meetings are held only every four years. I have only been to one of these meetings, which was held in Copenhagen last time, but everyone raves about them. The Copenhagen meeting was excellent and the meeting next year stands to be fantastic again. I am organising a symposium along with Becky Rosengaus about how social insects deal with parasites. The aim of the symposium is to try and bring together the sometimes disparate communities that work on adaptations to parasites. On one side, some groups work on behavioural adaptations that protect social insect colonies, others might work on life history characteristics that influence parasite susceptibility, and on the other side groups are working on the molecular basis of particular resistance mechanisms or using transcriptomics to understand what insects use to protect themselves. I do a bit of both so I’m really excited to see what comes up at this meeting.
The symposium is officially called “Phenotypic phenomena and molecular basis of social insect immunity” and we have a number of confirmed invited speakers including Paul Schmid-Hempel, Sylvia Cremer, Leonard Foster, and Marla Spivak. Abstract submission is now open, so if you’re a researcher working on immunity in social insects we’d love for you to apply. You can find more information about the IUSSI2014 meeting here, and submit your abstract here.
It hardly needs saying, but Cairns is quite far away from most people. To help with the travel costs the IUSSI sections are offering support for students who want to visit Cairns and present their work. So, if you are a student working on social insects, first: join your local branch of the IUSSI, and second: apply for support so you can come to Cairns and show off your work to the world.
