Arachnologische Mitteilungen 55

Arachnologische Mitteilungen 55: i-ii Karlsruhe, April 2018 Preface to the Proceedings of the 30th European Congress of Arachnology, Nottingham, 2017 August 20-25 The SpiderLab at the University of Nottingham was de- lighted to host the 30th European Congress of Arachnology in August 2017. Our organising ‘team’ here at Nottingham comprised Sara Goodacre together with Leah Ashley, Tom Coekin, Ella Deutsch, Rowan Earlam, Sarah Goertz, Alastair Gibbons, David Harvey, Antje Hundertmark, Liaque Latif, Michelle Strickland and Emma Vincent, but we were also supported by a fantastic team of colleagues from elsewhere, without whom the event could not have taken place. Sara was supported by co-organiser Dmitri Logunov, from the Manchester Museum, and by Geoff Oxford and Tony Rus- sell-Smith, who were instrumental in putting together a very enjoyable scientific program. Yuri Marusik was also instru- mental in making the event a success, by hosting the Russian party in addition to his scientific contribution to the meeting. The Congress was attended by more than 100 participants with representatives from Europe (UK, Spain, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Poland, Czech Republic, Liech- tenstein, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, Netherlands, Sweden, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Russia), and further afield – Asia (Israel, Russia, Sri Lanka, Japan, Pakistan), Oceania (New Zealand), Africa (South Africa, Algeria), Americas (Brazil, USA). A memorable feature of the meeting was that the for- mal salutations were followed by presentations by Torbjörn Kronestedt and Christian Komposch, who presented pho- tos taken both from old and recent editions of the Congress, starting from the very first congress in 1960 (18 participants, Bonn, Germany) to the most recent one in 2015 (170 partici- pants, Brno). This was a wonderful way to acknowledge that science and friendship often go hand in hand, and to reflect on past meetings. The plenary talks given throughout the conference il- lustrated the breadth of research interests contained within our research community. Yael Lubin gave the first talk of the conference, presenting a fascinating talk on the behavioural ecology of colonial spiders. The afternoon saw a session on taxonomy and phylogeny in parallel with a session on da- tabase and engagement. ESA President Wolfgang Nentwig introduced this database and engagement session, presenting new ideas about the future development of these important web resources, which are increasingly used by the scientific community. A special symposium on predatory effects of spi- ders took place in parallel with the taxonomy session, with an introductory talk given by Ferenc Samu on the non-con- sumptive effects of spiders in biological control. Subsequent plenary talks included that by Fritz Vollrath, who described the production of intricate silken ‘windlasses’, where sections of silk fibres spool around each other, thereby creating forces that act as a winch. Alistair McGregor’s plena- ry talk focused primarily on arachnid evolution and develop- ment, using Parasteatoda tepidariorum as a model study system to understand spider evolution. The final plenary talk was on nuptial gift-giving by male Pisaura mirabilis , which was given by Cristina Tuni. These plenary talks were interspersed with contributed talks on a wide range of other subjects, from spider radiations in the Canary islands (Miquel Arnedo), to the study of cryp- tic Eratigena atrica species (Geoff Oxford), and adaptations to extreme environments such as caves (Marco Isaia). Other topics included wolf spiders’ risk prone behaviour (Andrew Roberts), characterization of sensory organs found in male palps (Lenka Sentenská) and inventive methods to catch Idi­ opidae (Victoria Smith). As was perhaps appropriate given the geographic location of the congress, the very last afternoon of the meeting fin- ished with a session on Spider Recording Schemes in Britain. This was given by Peter Harvey of the British Arachnologi- cal Society and was followed by other colleagues speaking about similar schemes in Greece, the French Mid-Pyrenees and Germany (Maria Chatzaki, Samuel Danflous and Theo Blick.) At the end of the meeting the audience celebrated the best student presentations and posters during an award cer- emony. Marlis Dumke (Australia/Germany, First prize for Best Talk), Philip Steinhoff (Germany, Second Best Talk), Jan Raška (Czech Republic, Third Best Talk) and Jana Plíšková (Best Poster) were the winners of this year: congratulations! We thank everyone who took part in the meeting and we hope to meet many colleagues at next year’s congress! Sara Goodacre and Dmitri Logunov Logo by Michelle Strickland