In Linnaeus’ Wake: 300 Years of Marine Discovery — Conference Report

iii On Friday, 1 June 2007 some 100 scientists attended the 1-day symposium ‘In Linnaeus’ Wake: 300 Years of Marine Discovery’ organized by Zoologica Scripta , together with the Linnean Society of London, the Natural History Museum in London, UK, and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The symposium was held in the historical Burlington House of the Linnean Society of London on the occasion of the visit of the ship Götheborg , a replica of a Swedish East Indiaman, to London in order to mark the 300th anniversary of Linnaeus. The Götheborg had left Gothenburg, Sweden, in October 2005 bound for China having on board biologists who, in the same spirit as Linnaeus’s apostles, were collecting animals during the expedition. By the end of May 2007 the ship had reached London on her sail back to Sweden. The symposium addressed the achievements of Linnaeus apostles, the link between Linnaeus and the Swedish East India Company and the Swedish Academy of Sciences, as well as major marine discoveries in the past and present. Zoologica Scripta , published by the Norwegian and Swedish Academies of Sciences, is proud of having sponsored the symposium and will, therefore, dedicate the current issue to the speakers of the symposiums that volunteered to provided manuscripts summarizing their invited contributions. Following the warm welcome addresses given by Vaughan Southgate, Vice President and Zoological Secretary of the Linnean Society of London, and Pam Fredman, ViceChancelor of the Göteborg University, Sweden, Kenneth Nyberg from the Department of History, Göteborg University, opened the series of scientific contributions. He gave a historic overview over the journeys that Linnaeus’s 18–20 apostles undertook from 1746 to 1799 on board the vessels of the Swedish East India Company. He stressed how Linnaeus deliberately socialized and networked with the Swedish East India Company in order to get access to and make use of the company’s infrastructure for his research. He also emphasized how Linnaeus tied the Swedish East India Company — and thus the company’s facilities — from the very beginning to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Hans G. Nyman, Göteborg University, took the auditory into the world of microscopy in the 18th century. Linnaeus himself was fascinated about the opportunities provided by the use of a microscope but published only one microscopic experiment by himself. This study on Ustilago spores was probably conducted with a double microscope manufactured by John Cuff from London, who produced the most advanced microscopes of the time. Nevertheless, Linnaeus’ interpretation of the microscopic images of Ustilago spores was completely wrong. Philip S. Rainbow from the Natural History Museum, London, stressed the importance of marine biology collections, not only in the past but even more for the future. He pointed in particular to the type material, most of which is found in historical collections, some of them hardly accessible for molecular approaches due to the destructive agents used for preservation. Numerous specimens have been fixed with formalin (for example), which causes huge problems for genetic analyses of such collection material. Nevertheless, Phil Rainbow also depicted the opportunities that museum collections offer for future studies. John Taylor from the Natural History Museum, London reported about one of the major discoveries in marine biology throughout the last decades. He reported about chemosynthetic communities associated with deep-water hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, in particular about bivalve molluscs, which are one of the main components of such ecosystems. These molluscs that have been identified to belong to at least seven bivalve groups house methaneoxidizing or sulphide-oxidizing bacteria. Within the last decade a remarkable number of species have been described for these ecosystems, providing an excellent example for further need of basic inventory work in marine biology. After the lunch break, Katrin Linse from the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK, reviewed the expeditions undertaken to explore the biodiversity of Antarctica; from the first journeys by Bellingshausen in 1819 to modern high-tech expeditions facilitating the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML) project. Her contribution also documented impressively the need for enormous resources required for conducting state-of-the-art international research expeditions to explore the biodiversity of marine Arctic environments. Daniel Jones from Southampton University, UK, needs to be credited for stepping in on very short notice after one contribution had to be cancelled due to affliction of the speaker. He took up the issue of the enormous resources required for modern marine research. He illustrated how — in the best of Linnaeus’s spirit — cooperation with big Blackwell Publishing Ltd Editorial