The number of posters was very large and one poster presented by a PhD student won the award as the best poster, selected by the board of Oikos during the conference. This was number 100 with the title: “Ant larvae as a secret weapon against social parasites” by Unni Pulliainen. During the poster session lots of engaged presentations occurred.

There were also a number of marine and aquatic posters, for some the author had the possibility to pitch their poster in 3 minutes.

Tiina Salo, now being on a post-doc, showed in her poster that Lymnea stagnalis responds more strongly to a heat wave after exposure to a mixture of micropollutants. But they recovered fast after the heat wave had passed. To feed the snails she used ecological salad. In the future experiments they will be fed leaves from different aquatic plant species.

Several posters presented different aspects on the hot topic “ top- down – bottom-up” regulation of different ecosystems and impact of cascading effects and interactions between species. One species that creates lots of emotions is the cormorant, when establishing large populations on small islands along the Baltic coast.

From the Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution two posters were presented, one on the long-term effect of Pilayella on the settlement of Fucus vesiculosus by Susanne Qvarfordt and the other one presented results from a master project on the Swedish west coast about two closely related Littorina snail species behaviour when placing their egg sacs on different fucoid species.

The last poster that I want to present was of high interest dealing with the new crab species, the mud crab, Rhithropanopeus harrisii and its impact on the local fauna. It is just a question when this crab will arrive on the Swedish coast. Keep your eye out for it.

The conference ended after three intense days.