I'm pleased to report that freshwater gastropodswere the marquee attraction at the 68th meeting of the American Malacological Society in Charleston last month.  The scientific sessions commenced Sunday morning August 4 with a pair of plenary addresses on our favorite animals: Amy Wethington reminding us what marvelous models freshwater snails may be to address scientific questions of great generality, and Ken Brown & Paul Johnson highlighting their presently imperiled status.

These talks segued smoothly into the featured symposium of AMS 2002: "The Biology and Conservation of Freshwater Gastropods," a program of 15 talks ranging broadly across the ecology, evolution, and genetics of snails from Alberta to Zambia.  Speakers included John Alderman, Art Bogan, Rob Guralnick, Matthias Glaubrecht, Steve Johnson, Eileen Jokinen, Chuck Lydeard, Bob McMahon, Doug Shelton, Jon Todd, Tim Stewart, Brian Watson, and others.  The symposium was designed to build toward a meeting of the Freshwater Gastropods of North America project Sunday evening.

Minutes of that eventful gathering are available from the FWGNA web site:
4Aug02.html
If those of you who were present notice any additions or corrections to these minutes, please let me know.  The bottom line from the Sunday evening meeting can be summed up in one word, however - decentralization.

The celebration of freshwater gastropods continued through AMS conference.  There were seven contributed talks and ten poster presentations on freshwater snails Monday afternoon.  And Tuesday August 6 featured a special session, organized by Amy Wethington, entitled "Pulmonates in the Laboratory."   The eight invited presentations primarily involved Physa and Biomphalaria and focused on behavioral, morphological, and genetic questions.

A good time was had by all.  For more details, the Program and Abstracts of all presentations at the Charleston meeting should be available soon as a PDF file from the AMS website:
http://erato.acnatsci.org/ams/
Plans are currently in the works for a special issue of the American Malacological Bulletin featuring the freshwater gastropod  talks given at AMS 2002.  So keep in touch, everybody!

Cheers,
Rob