Spring Meeting, 23-25 April 2014

This year’s BSPB Spring Meeting takes place at Lancaster University. The meeting opens on the Wednesday evening with a Plenary Lecture on the use of protists to investigate eukaryotic origins, given by Martin Embley. Two symposia then follow. The first (on the Thursday) celebrates the distinguished career of Bland Finlay who, after 35 years of protistan research, has recently retired from his academic post at Queen Mary University of London. Speakers paying tribute to Bland’s contribution to protistan biodiversity, biogeography and ecology include Genoveva Estaban, Tom Fenchel, Stephen Maberly, Bill Martin and David Wilkinson. The second symposium (on the Friday) examines the evolution and ecology of flagellate protists within the guts of insects, with invited contributions from Rod Dillon (Sand fly), Lihui Wang & Petros Ligoxygakis (Drosophila), Eamonn Mallon (Bumblebee) and Renate Radek (Termites). Further information about the meeting can be found at http://www.protist.org.uk/meetings.html. There is a cost associated with attendance but anyone wishing to attend should contact Jackie Parry directly for ‘mates rates’ (j.parry@lancaster.ac.uk).