Please join us for the 729th meeting of the Helminthological Society of Washington, our spring scientific meeting at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC: https://serc.si.edu) in Edgewater, MD. Directions to SERC are here: https://serc.si.edu/visit/directions.
We are excited to invite you to participate in our hybrid Spring HelmSoc meeting on Friday and Saturday, April 28-29, 2023. Invited keynote talks will be delivered in the evening of April 28 with April 29 reserved for traditional research talks.
Registration is $50 for regular members and $25 for students and includes a reception with light refreshments Friday evening, and breakfast, lunch, coffee and snacks during breaks on Saturday. The deadline for regular registration and to apply for student travel grants (more below) is April 26 at 11:59 PM. To attend and participate in the meeting, you are required to be a member of the society (Join HelmSoc here).
Everyone please register (and pay) using the Register button above or at the following link (abstract submission is separate - see below): https://hsow.wildapricot.org/event-5227428
The research talks should conform to 15-minute time slots, which includes time following the talk for questions. If you would like to submit an abstract to present a research talk, please follow the directions below. If at any time you have difficulty, please contact Michael Zimmermann (michael.zimmermann1@gmail.com).
We will hold the meeting both in person at SERC and using ZOOM with synchronous (live) talks. This format will allow more members to present their work to the larger group and gain feedback for their amazing research.
Instructions for abstracts (an example follows):
1. Use Times New Roman font, with font size 12.
2. DO NOT indent any part of the abstract, authors, or institutions.
3. Give the title first followed by a period. Use ‘sentence case’ for the title (i.e. do not capitalize every word).
4. Immediately after the title, list the authors’ names (in CAPITAL letters), denoting the presenting authors name with an asterisk (*).
5. After the authors, present departmental and institutional affiliations in the appropriate order. Use numbers to denote different affiliations.
6. Begin the abstract on a new line; abstracts should contain fewer than 250 words.
7. Check to make sure all scientific names are properly italicized (or underlined).
8. Check the format of your abstract with the EXAMPLE shown below. (When submitting your abstract, the submission form may erase any bold/italics. That is OK- We will fix this in the bulletin).
9. Submit your abstract.
Deadline for registration and abstract submission: Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 11:59pm.
Example:
A keeper of many crypts: the parasitoid Euderus set manipulates the behavior of a taxonomically diverse array of oak gall wasp species. KELLY L. WEINERSMITH*1, ANNA K. G. WARD2, OMAR S. KHODOR2, SCOTT P. EGAN1, and ANDREW A. FORBES2. 1Rice University, Houston, TX. 2University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
Some parasites modify the behavior of their hosts to increase parasites fitness while harming the host. This "manipulation" may require specialization, limiting the range of hosts a parasite can infect or manipulate. However, the range of hosts that parasites are able to manipulate, and factors that limit the host range of manipulating parasites are currently unclear. To address these questions, we will need more data on the host range of manipulating parasites, and information on whether or not these hosts are also manipulated. Here, we explore the host range of the crypt-keeper wasp, Euderus set, which was previously determined to manipulate the crypt gall wasp (Bassettia pallida) into excavating an emergence hole from which the parasitoid will emerge following development. We find that the crypt-keeper wasp infects at least six additional, taxonomically diverse hosts. The gall wasp host's extended phenotype (i.e., the structure of the gall it produces) may play a larger role in limiting the crypt-keeper wasps' host range than does host taxonomic relatedness, but more work is necessary to quantify the full range of hosts which the crypt-keeper wasp is able to infect and manipulate.
Student Travel Grants to HelmSoc & the American Society of Parasitologists (ASP) Meetings:
This is a great opportunity for students - there will be awards for best student presentation, and great opportunities to interact with other parasitology researchers and students.
HelmSoc offers Student Travel Awards. Any student member of HelmSoc can apply for a Travel Grant of up to $100 to present a talk or poster at the HelmSoc Spring Meeting. The Society will award up to 10 grants each spring. The amount awarded will depend on the distance traveled, but will minimally cover the cost of registration. Alternately, the student may choose to receive a grant to defray the registration costs for the annual American Society of Parasitology (ASP) meeting if attended in the same year. In this case, the student must present a talk at both the Spring HelmSoc meeting and the 2023 ASP meeting. Travel expenses to the HelmSoc meeting or ASP registration will be reimbursed upon submission of receipts after the meeting ends. Students and mentors should be members of HelmSoc, and proof of student status is required. A current HelmSoc member may sponsor students whose mentors are not members. More information is available here: https://www.helmsoc.org/HelmSoc_site/helmsoc/student_travel.html
Also, please note that the presenter of the best oral presentation at the Spring Meeting will be eligible for additional travel support from the American Society of Parasitologists to help defray the costs of attending the 2023 ASP meeting (July 13-16 in Kansas City, MO - more information available here). Our meeting happens after ASP's abstract submission deadline, but we have permission to submit late abstracts for students who presented at HelmSoc's Spring Meeting. If you are using the HelmSoc student travel grant to defray the cost of registration to ASP and want to submit a late abstract, please do so immediately after registering for the HelmSoc's Spring Meeting by emailing the ASP Scientific Program Officers (their contact info is on page 15 of this PDF, which also contains info about the 2023 ASP meeting). Also, please be prepared to let us know on the 29th whether or not you will attend the ASP meeting if you win the student presentation award. The ASP student grant committee needs to know by the end of April if they are holding funding for a HelmSoc award winner or not. Note, to receive ASP funding you need to a) be a member of ASP (i.e., have paid your 2023 dues), b) present at the ASP meeting, and c) commit to staying at the meeting through to the end (i.e., be present at the Business Meeting).
We hope to see you at our Spring HelmSoc Meeting!