09 January 2009

SICB 2009 review

It was utterly appropriate that our lab's first research poster on Marmorkrebs be at the 2009 SICB meeting in Boston. Because Boston is a place that worships crustaceans.


If that is not a shrine to lobsters, I don't know what else it could be. Bow your head!

We went out to the meeting a day early with the aim of visiting some other Marmorkrebs labs in the area. We stopped off at Harvard university, and enjoyed the hospitality of post-doc Frederike Alwes, who works in Cassandra Extavour's lab on invertebrate development. Frederike rocks.

The doors on the Harvard Biology building again showed evidence of crustacean worship:


(In fairness, many other organisms were present on the doors and on the walls of the building.)

The SICB meeting itself was a packed to the rafters. I heard reports that attendance was around 1,800, and that this was about 50% more than last year!

Be that as it may, the poster session went well. We introduced many individuals to Marmorkrebs for the first time, and my co-author and poster presenter, Stephanie, had many interesting conversations.


We had hoped to make it to Barb Beltz's lab sometime during the trip. Unfortunately, first scheduling and then the weather conspired against us. We had a very small window of opportunity spoiled by the prospect of an ice storm. Having lived through the massive Montreal ice storm of 1998, I wanted no part of that. Others may brave the Massachusetts cold in the name of science.... but let's just say my students insisted taking a cab instead of walking to the nearby subway station when we left.

Luckily, there wasn't an ice storm that morning, but the rain on the window indicated it could very easily have been otherwise.


If you're one of the individuals who met us at SICB and are visiting the website for the first time, welcome! We hope you continue to visit, and hope we can provide resources for you. It looks very likely that we will be able to do so, as several more of our animals went into berry for the first time in the five days we were gone.

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