The World Congress of Malacology in Vienna, Austria, was held from 19-25^th August 2001 in the Institute of Zoology, University of Vienna. The congress, the 14^th triennial international congress of Unitas Malacologica and the 67^th Annual Meeting of the American Malacological Union and Jahresversammlung der Friedrich Held Gesellschaft attracted over 400 delegates from over 50 countries. Apart from the keynote lectures for the five symposia held in Hörsaal 1, Neues Institutsgebäude, lectures and poster sessions were held in the Biozentrum of the University, a stylish modern building with museum exhibits along the main corridor, and high level terraces connecting some theatres. Accommodation was in various hotels or student hotels around the city, with passes provided for the trams and subways. This provided excellent sight-seeing on the way to and from the Biozentrum. A variety of restaurants near to Biozentrum provided lunches, and, in the evenings, many found their way to the open air diners which crowded the area in front of the towering Rathaus.

Monday evening was set for a reception in the Natural History Museum in Marie-Theresien Platz, with welcoming addresses followed by wine tasting and snacks and an opportunity to wander around the galleries. Lunch was provided in the Biozentrum for the two poster sessions on the Tuesday and Wednesday. The positioning of the posters next to the theatres gave everyone a chance to take in the enormous assemblage of posters. A sudden rainstorm on Wednesday evening produced a swift and efficiently managed change from a planned open air to an inside Heurigen dinner in a typical tavern in the suburbs. The meal, a delight for carnivores, was accompanied by folk music.

Field Excursions

The four field trips occupied Thursday, and ranged from a cultural tour of the Wachau valley of the Danube, to a trip to Schneeberg, the habitat of Alpine gastropods. The Wachau trip included a visit to a splendid baroque Benedictine monastery at Melk, and a trip to the village of Durnstein, beneath the ruined castle where the English king Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned in 1192. Other trips were a trip with experts from the Institute of Palaeontology to a range of paratethyan deposits from offshore, brackish and limnic environments, and a trip to the Danube alluvial forest to see a variety of limnic and terrestrial molluscs.

Symposia Keynotes

In the keynote talk introducing the symposium on Mollusca in Ancient Lakes, Frank Wesselingh (NNHM, Leiden) and Ellinor Michel (University of Amsterdam) reviewed the taxonomic and morphological diversity of the molluscs. The characteristic morphological trends include open coiling, miniaturization, and heavy ornamentation. With the benefit of recently proposed phylogenies, it is possible to look for ecological and physical factors which stimulate this endemic diversity. Moreover, the good fossil records which molluscs often provide, in comparison to other ancient lake species such as fish, taken together with sequence stratigraphy, allows potential environmental causes to be identified.

The mass of knowledge of developmental genes in insects and vertebrates shows that a similar repertoire of genes control the development of their fundamentally different morphologies. Bernard Degnan (University of Queensland) introduced the Evo-Devo symposium with an enlightening lecture on conserved developmental regulatory genes in Haliotis larvae. The Hox genes which are expressed in the anteroposterior axis patterns of a range of bilaterians. The five anterior Hox genes of Haliotis (Has-Hox1-5) are expressed in the trochophore developing CNS (a feature shared with annelids) and some appear to be co-opted into shell formation. Other transcription gene families (Mox , POU) are also expressed in the trochophore, in restricted morphogenetic fields.

Daniel Distel (University of Maine) gave a useful overview for the Chemosymbiosis symposium in his keynote talk on the evolutionary perspectives of the bivalve gill-bacteria symbiosis,. The symbioses range from cellulolytic symbionts of wood borers such as Teredo to methanotrophs and sulphur bacteria found in a variety of bivalve from hydrothermal vents, whalefalls and sewage outfalls.

Patricia Morse (University of Washington) introduced the symposium on Comparative Morphology with a tribute to the careers of Vera Fretter and Ruth Turner. These women were mentors of students worldwide and exemplars of quality science. The timeless publications of these ëinternational treasuresí determined the evolution of the field, with its experimental focus, interdisciplinary nature and concentration on new techniques.

Tony Whitten (World Bank, Washington) ended the general session of keynote lectures by giving us all a stiff talking-to in order to encourage a greater number of delegates to participation in (and after) the Conservation and Biodiversity symposium. Despite more money being available for conservation than ever before, the outlook has never been more grim ñ reefs poisoned, forests cut, rivers polluted, limestone quarried. Inadequacy of our approach obvious in the paucity of conservation themes in our journals, our limited databases and global mapping. There is an image problem, as the few boring displays in zoos make clear, and support is for habitats rather than species, but there are a few examples of excellence, which we might enlarge by trying to match expertise with areas of high malacofaunal richness, more field guides in local languages and perhaps training parataxonomists.

Conclusion

The congress closed with a memorable Congress Dinner in the spacious hall of the Rathaus, at which Janice Voltzou, President of the AMU presented prizes for best student presentations, and JohnTaylor (NHM, London) thanked Professor Salvini-Plawen and the other members of the organizing committee for their enormous efforts in bringing the Congress into action.

The 15^th Congress will be in Perth, Australia, in July 2004, with Fred Wells as President (wel...@museum.wa.gov.au). Western Australia has a tropical north coast, a temperate south coast and a west coast overlap zone with 10% endemic molluscs. Western Australia has more genera of land snails than Europe has species. Three major symposia envisaged are: Phylogeny, Fisheries and Aquaculture, and Ecology and Biogeography.Excursions will include a day trip to Rottnest Iskland, a diving expedition, a boat trip up the Swan River to a local vineyard and a tour of Perth, including the Western Aistralian Museum. Things in Perth cost half as much as in the USA and a third as much as in London.

To join Unitas ask Jackie van Goethem for a membership form (vang...@naturalsciences.be). The subscription is 16 Euro per year, however members are encouraged to subscribe 48 Euro for three years.

Congratulations to Peter McIntyre of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, who won the award in Vienna for best oral presentation. His award included $500, a copy of R. Dillonís Ecology of Freshwater Molluscs and a two year subscription to the Malacological Society. His work indicated that trophic differentiation accompanied the divergence of thiarid genera in Lake Tanganyika, while selection by predatory crabs may have played a role in the more recent diversification of the Lavigera group.

From the Congress:

Natural History Museum entrance: poster session in Biozentrum 1 2

Terrace at Biozentrum; Heurigen evening; Melk monastery (cultural tour)

Durnstein (cultural tour); sailing on the Danube (cultural tour)

Congress Dinner in Vienna Rathaus; Janice Voltzou presenting student awards; Luitfried Salvani-Plawen, the outgoing President of Unitas, and,bottom right, Rudi Bieler and Fred Wells, former and incoming Presidents.