Symposium

Symposium - Progress in Environmental Stress, Adaptation and Evolution August 22-26, 2004 at Sandbjerg, Denmark
Sponsors:
European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB)
Center for Environmental Stress Research and Faculty of Sciences, University of Aarhus (DK). Most organisms and populations have to cope with hostile environments, threatening their existence. Their ability to respond phenotypically and genetically to these challenges and to evolve adaptive mechanisms is, therefore, crucial. The aim of the symposium is to understand, from an evolutionary perspective, the impact of stress on biological systems. We have invited speakers that at different organizational levels, from genes to individuals and populations, explore how organisms adapt to (extreme) environments genetically and physiologically, how stress changes genetic structure and affects life histories and how environmental and genetic stress shape selection pressure and causes extinction of populations. These issues have already been dealt with in a symposium on stress and evolutionduring the 5th International Congress of Evolutionary Biology and Systematics in Budapest (1966), and in the end resulted in a book edited by us Environmental Stress, Adaptation and Evolution (1997)published in the
Birkhäuser EXS series (EXS 83). It is now nearly ten years later and knowledge and (genomic) techniques in this research field have progressed rapidly. Therefore, we are thinking a follow-up to be timely and are organising this small, 3 day symposium on the same issues
Structure:
The number of participants will be limited to around 50, of which 15 are reserved for invited speakers (for list see below). There will be room for maximal 40 presentations of which 25 are open for contributed talks (25 min.). In conjunction with the symposium a special thematic issue of the Journal of evolutionary Biology will be published on the topic that will contain high quality papers by the invited speakers. In addition, it will be possible for contributed papers to be included in this special issue of JEB. This will ensure that the papers get lots of exposure in this thematic setting. Papers for the special issue will be selected by the organisers of the symposium and the chief editor of JEB, Juha Merila. Mind that all manuscripts, including those of the invited speakers, will not be treated favourably for this special issue. They are subject to normal, rigorous peer-review and scope limits of the journal: they have to address important evolutionary, and not purely functional, problems.
Participation:
Those that are interested in the symposium topic and want to participate and/or present a paper are kindly invited to contact the organisers from now on. Please do send your application to Corneel Vermeulen (c.j.vermeulen@biol.rug.nl) who will collect and structure applications (but for safety do send also a cc to both Volker Loeschcke (volker.loeschcke@biology.au.dk) and Kuke Bijlsma (r.bijlsma@biol.rug.nl)), not later than the 7th of June. As we, in addition to the invited speakers, can only accommodate around 35 participants, the symposium might easily become full. If this is the case the organisers will select
participants and contributions that seem to fit that symposium and the special volume of JEB the best. Therefore it is important that tentative participants provide a few lines about their research interests, and if they want to present a contribution, please provide also a title and a substantial abstract (up to 200 words). Membership of ESEB is not prerequisite, but gives a discount of the conference fee and might give some priority. Practical information:
Title: Progress in Environmental Stress, Adaptation and Evolution
Date: August 22-26, 2004
Deadline: June 7, 2004 (you will hear about acceptance not later than June 15, 2004).
Organisers: Volker Loeschcke, Dept. of Ecology and Genetics, University of Aarhus (DK) Kuke Bijlsma, Evolutionary Genetics, University of Groningen (NL)
Place: Sandbjerg Manor House, in the south of Jutland, Denmark. This is a conference centre of the University of Aarhus in a very nice and rural setting, easily reached by train and plane. For info see: www.sandbjerg.dk/en/ .
Participants: maximal number approximately 50 (except for some invited speakers allotted to ESEB members).
Costs: The conference fee is Euro 450 for ESEB members Euro 550 for non-members. (Thus ESEB members get a discount of Euro 100, which is more than twice the yearly membership fee including the printed version of JEB and almost four times for online-only members. So it pays to become a member!)The conference fee covers all costs including full board and lodging from Sunday evening August 22 to Thursday morning August 26. Invited speakers that have accepted: Jean R. David, CNRS, France Martin E. Feder, University of Chicago, USA Richard Frankham, Macquarie University, Australia Tyrone B. Hayes, UC Berkeley, USA Rolf F. Hoekstra, Wageningen University, Netherlands Ary A. Hoffmann, La Trobe University, Australia Annsi Laurila, Uppsala University, Sweden Gordon J. Lithgow, Buck Institute, USA Juha Merila, Helsinki University, Finland Rick A. Relya, University of Pittsburg, USA Arjan de Visser, Wageningen University, Netherlands Bas J. Zwaan/Paul M. Brakefield, Leiden University, Netherlands Volker Loeschcke, University of Aarhus, Denmark Kuke Bijlsma, University of Groningen, Netherlands