Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Meeting on Advances in Cyclostome Research

I am writing about a scientific meeting focusing on cyclostome development and evolution which was held in January 2008 at RIKEN CDB in Kobe, Japan.

I wonder if this was the first scientific meeting dedicated to cyclostomes, namely extant jawless vertebrates. We really expect the second meeting with the same scope.

I contributed to this meeting with one oral and one poster presentations. Because this meeting was held about 10 months after I moved from Kobe to Germany, I remember well that I felt very awkward to guide non-Japanese participants out to the town which I knew well but left some time ago.

Later, participants' contributions were compiled into a proceeding publication, in the form of a special issue of the journal, Zoological Science, the journal affiliated with the Zoological Society of Japan.


In fact, the original picture which became the cover of this special journal issue was taken by one of my former colleague from Kobe, based on my idea. To take the picture, we had lamprey and hagfish in the same aquarium tank in the lab (for the first time in vertebrate evolution?).

Please guess which the tank had inside, freshwater or salt water.