The Cladocera 2024 conference continued in the tradition of the Symposia on Cladocera, which used to be held triannually until the covid-19 pandemic disrupted our lives. After a seven-year long gap, we met once more in the hotel Il Chiostro in Verbania, Italy, at the 12th Symposium on Cladocera.

The conference was attended by some 110 participants, who presented 63 contributed talks and 40 posters. These covered a wide range of topics related to the biology of cladocerans (with contributions frequently focused, as usual, on the model genus Daphnia), covering their ecology, evolutionary biology, diversity, systematics, genomics, microbiomes, interaction with microplastics, parasites, cyanobacteria and environmental stressors, etc. Two exciting keynote talks were given by Justyna Wolinska and Jana Isanta-Navarro.

What happened?

Keeping with the tradition of Symposia on Cladocera, the conference did not have parallel sessions to ensure that experts from different fields were exposed to each other’s views and knowledge. To facilitate this mixing even more, the order of presentations was more or less randomised, so we did not have large blocks dedicated to single topics. Want to learn more? This poem by Anna Bednarska sums it all.

Sufficient time and space was allocated to 40 posters, which were presented throughout the whole meeting in the cloisters of Il Chiostro, and presented in two poster sessions on Tuesday and Thursday, preceded by flash talks by presenters advertising their posters.

The scientific programme run from Monday to Friday, with a Wednesday afternoon break to relax and explore Verbania or its surroundings, or visit the Institute of Water Research CNR in Pallanza (a hiking trip led by Diego Fontaneto). The first participants arrived on Sunday and almost everyone stayed until Friday evening, when the conference was concluded by a dinner and dancing at Isola dei Pescatori, a pictureque island in the Borromean Gulf of Lago Maggiore. On Friday afternoon, a special session dedicated to Piet Spaak, full of humour, friendship but also references to his exciting research, was organised by Nelson Hairston and Justyna Wolinska. We also announced the oustanding student talks and posters, and awarded their authors.

This poem written by Anna Bednarska piece by piece throughout the whole conference sums it all – may be not as well as the abstract book, but certainly in a more concise and poetic way.

I love all Daphnia so much,

even when old ephippia won’t hatch,

even when their behavior is bad

just because their food has no fat,

even when they produce too few young

to make my statistics strong,

even when their inducible morph

makes them look like a dwarf,

even when Metschnikowia spores

do no infect whole cohorts,

even when they’re mangled and spat out

after escaping fish mouth,

even when lakes eutrophication

drives them to hybridization,

even when “new” species that hops my jars

was already described by Sars,

even when gene up-regulation  

causes a rejuvenation,

even when high salinity water

makes evolving spots hotter,

but also ‘cause Piet’s norm of reaction

would make a fun publication.

So now I will jump to conclusion

working with Daphnia leads to confusion,

But even though they make my life hard

I still love them with all of my heart.

Final programme of Cladocera XII conference is now online. Apart from regular contributions (65 contributed talks and 41 posters) and two keynote lectures, we are happy to announce a special Friday afternoon session, organised by Justyna Wolinska and Nelson Hairston: “Short Talks on Huge Contributions to the Cladoceran World: A Fond Farewell to Piet Spaak“.

The abstract book is also available for download.

Two excellent European cladocerologists, Justyna Wolinska (Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries & Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) and Jana Isanta-Navarro (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) accepted our invitation to give keynote lectures. Learn more about them.

Both talks will focus on different aspects of cutting-edge experimental research, using cladocerans as model organisms. So it should not come as a surprise that they will be rather Daphnia-centered. However, we are sure the topics (ecological impacts of environmental threats, and evolutionary ecology) will be of major interest to all of us attending the meeting, regardless of the specific taxon we study.