Vol. 17(2): 73–99 THE 25TH POLISH MALACOLOGICAL SEMINAR SEMINAR REPORT Wearenow 25 yearsold! Well,not theAssociation were there. It also advertised 27 posters, many of as such (it was established in 1995), but the tradition which somehow failed to arrive but instead there were of organising Seminars certainly is. The 25th Seminar two last-minuteposters(thus not in theprogramme was held (and thus the anniversary celebrated) from and theAbstract Book). Both thenon-materialised April 21st till Aptril 24th, in Boszkowo near Leszno. posters and the extra posters are included in the ab- We seem to be oscillating between two extremes: last stracts below. A special committee judged presenta- year we went to Gdynia – a big city, this year – to tions of young malacologists. Theaward for thebest Boszkowo. It is a littlevillagenearLeszno(and for poster was won by DOMINIKA MIERZWA (Museum and those who do not know their geography, Leszno is not Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences, War- far from Poznañ), on a lake. Boszkowo (presumably) saw) for her “Malacology and geology. Distribution of has somepeopleduringtheseasonbut whenwewere Cepaea vindobonensis and thegeologicalstructureof there, we seemed to be the only inhabitants, that is the substratum”. The best oral presentation award apart from thepeoplerunningour hoteland from went to ALEKSANDRA SKAWINA (Department of Pa- participants of some other conference. It was a very laeobiology and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, War- good arrangement, we felt as if we owned the place. saw University) for the “Experimental decomposition Theorganising institutions includedTheAssocia- of recent bivalves and mineralisation of gills of Trias- tion of Polish Malacologists, Adam Mickiewicz Univer- sic Unionoida”. Bravegirls! Congratulations! Will sity in Poznañ, Plant Protection Institute in Poznañ there ever be some awards for old malacologists? We and the University of Life Sciences, also in Poznañ. It liked some other presentations very much. Most post- turns out that the last three institutions between them ers were beautiful (Fig. 1), and we especially enjoyed havequitea fewmalacologists – theorganising com - the two lectures by our guests from across the border mittee consisted of ANDRZEJ LESICKI, JERZY B£OSZYK, –HEIKE REISE and JOHN HUTCHINSON – both about JAN KOZ£OWSKI, EWA DANKOWSKA, BART£OMIEJ slug mating behaviour, and both with short porn GO£DYN, TOMASZ KA£USKI, JOANNA PIEÑKOWSKA, movies. ELIZA RYBSKA, MARIA URBAÑSKA and MONIKA Theattendancewasgood (morethan 60 malacolo - JASKULSKA. They never disclosed who was responsible gists in thelist of participants, actually 59 malacolo - for which part of the organisation, but everything was gical people, plus two children, plus two non-mala- absolutely perfect, so there was nobody to blame. cological husbands). There was one guest from Ger- Good team! Great thanks! many, onefrom theUnitedKingdom (now basedin At the registration desk we were given very good Germany), plus their son, and one guest from the conference packets which contained not only the Czech Republic. About one quarter of the partici- usual programme, abstract book, badge, notebook pants (14 people) are still at the pre-doctoral stage and pen, but also a few extra items: a conference mug, and thus theso-calledyoung malacologists. On the a bag, a T-shirt, a three-colour marker pen and a otherhand, someof thelast year’syoung malaco - snail-bank (like a piggy-bank, only different), the last logists arenow doctors. item – we suspect – to encourage us to save money for Unfortunetaly, some very important people failed the next Seminar. The opening ceremony (speeches to be there: Professors STEFAN W. ALEXANDROWICZ and so on) was very brief and followed by the first ses- (who had started the sequence of events that ulti- sion. mately led to the 25th Seminar), ADOLF RIEDEL (hon- In all, those who were diligent spent two whole orary member) and ANDRZEJ WIKTOR (another hon- days in thesessions.Theprogrammecontained33 orary member). We regretted it very much, but they, oral presentations, and most or even all participants too, certainly regretted not being there. 74 Seminar Report The number of presentations in the Abstract Book dealing mostly with various aspects of clausiliid ecol- was 60, with the mean of about one presentation per ogy, life histories and conservation – this time there head, but this was only the mean. The reality was were as many as four clausiliid papers. Again, like last much more complicated: there were 30 single-author year, we were promised some presentations and the presentations, 15 double-barrelled presentations and promisers never delivered – our eastern neighbours 15 with threeormoreauthors. Peopletendto co- simply failed to attend, although their presentations operate a lot, and many papers/posters presented were on the Seminar menu (naughty people!). were either interdisciplinary or a result of very time- Thedivision in thetabledisregardswhetherthe -consuming research. There were no participants main characterin thestory was a snail or a bivalveor without presentations (or without at least a part of where it lived (land or water). The snail:bivalve ratio presentation) to their name, and only one poster among the presentations was 2.35:1 (compared to without theaccompanying author. 1.54: 1 in 2008, 1.67:1 in 2007, 2.38:1 in 2006), and the Likeduring thelast threeseminars,to havea pic - land:water ratio was 0.94:1 (0.91:1 in 2008, 0.54:1 in ture of the variety of presented topics, I have at- 2007 and 1.13:1 in 2006). Apparently, the trend in the tempted assigning papers to disciplines and com- snail:bivalve ratio which for three years kept changing pared the result with a few previous seminars. Some in favour of bivalves is now reversed (are they running presentations were difficult to assign to a discipline out of bivalves?). The same, to a smaller extent, was (somehavebeenassignedto morethan onein the true of the interest in aquatic malacology already last Table),and I had to apply morethan onedivision year, and the increase tendency was maintained. into categories. To show how difficult it is to catego- There were two official social events: the banquet rise presentations, the abstracts below have been arbi- on thesecondday and thegrill party on thethird. trarily divided in a slightly different way. The banquet was very good, especially that on this oc- Thenumbersin thecolumns do not show any re- casion we consumed a huge anniversary cake, like a ally significant trend, especially since last year; I would wedding cace only with a snail on top (see Fig. 2). We rather interpret the changes as reflecting the varying have a new honorary member now: Professor attendance (the random presence/absence of mala- ANDRZEJ PIECHOCKI (University of £ódŸ), who is an cologists during consecutive meetings) or the fact outstanding specialist in freshwater molluscs, one of that thenatureof somedisciplinesprecludesproduc- the founder-members of the Association and the ing a new paper every year. Of things that are not in main organiser of two of our Seminars (Fig. 3). Pro- the table: most applied presentations dealt with pest fessor PIECHOCKI was very surprised, he said he did slugs and attempts at curbing their appetite with vari- not expect this, and he was telling us the truth – the ous substances; many conservation papers were about proof was that hehad not brought a tie. species from Annex II of the EU Habitats Directive. The Seminar excursion went to quite many places. Also, there is now a rather strong clausiliid lobby, Theplacemost participants likedmost was theExperi - Number of papers/posters No. Discipline 2006 2007 2008 2009 1 Ecology 9 20 25 18 2 Lifehistories 9778 3 Conservation 7247 4 Fossil molluscs 5644 5 Applied malacology 4254 6 Parasitology 3364 7 Faunistics 2245 8 Methodology 2 3 2 9 Physiology 2 1 1 10 Structure(histology, cytology, shell) 2 0 5 11 Variation 0231 12 Systematics 2243 13 Molecular genetics 1313 14 Collections 31 15 Others (general, behaviour, archaeology) 2335 16 History of malacology 2 Seminar Report 75 Fig. 1. Oneof theposters,plus two of theparticipants (Photo B. M. P OKRYSZKO) Fig. 2. The anniversary cake (the snail and the inscription were also eaten in the end; they were made of jelly) (Photo B. M. POKRYSZKO) 76 Seminar Report Fig. 3. Professor ANDRZEJ PIECHOCKI in the act of becoming honorary member (the absence of tie merci- fully invisible;thepersonwith thetieis thePresident)(Photo B. M. P OKRYSZKO) Fig. 4. Young malacologists performing (Photo B. M. POKRYSZKO) Seminar Report 77 mental Station of The University of Life Sciences of The next Seminar will be organised by the Poznañ wherewesawtamewolves(tamebut other - Wroc³aw malacologists (at present four professionally wisequitereal).Thenwewentto Obrzycko. Those active and one actively retired) who volunteered who remembered the palace in Obrzycko, where we (well, do you know the expression “to be volun- had had our 8th (1992) and 10th (1994) Seminars, teered?”). We know already when and where it will be: could not recognise it and/or believe what they saw. April 20th–23rd 2010, Kudowa-Zdrój in thebeautiful Everybody was equally impressed by the new campus of Sto³oweMts. the Adam Mickiewicz University, and their working Our Abstract Book was mostly in Polish, with TWO conditions. Now these people should be required to snails on the cover. Brief abstracts in English are pre- produce twice as many publications per year. At least... sented below; in most cases translated and abbrevi- The grill party, after the Seminar excursion, was in ated surreptitiously behind the authors’ back, by some respects even better than the banquet. Not only Yours Truly. was the food good and plenty, but also our younger BEATA M. POKRYSZKO participants turned out to be bloody good singers Museum of Natural History, Wroc³aw University (see Fig. 4). Unofficial social events were many, and it Sienkiewicza 21, 50-335 Wroc³aw, Poland may havehad to do with thefact that thePoznañ (e-mail: [email protected]) Brewery was one of the sponsors.