SZG/SSZ/SZS: Schweizerische Zoologische Gesellschaft
The joint conference of the Swiss Zoological Society(SZS), the Swiss Botanical Society (SBS), and the Swiss Society for Systematic Biology (SSS) took place in February in Geneva. Two travel grants for junior scientists were awarded. Two regular issues and one supplementary issues of our scientific journal, the “Revue suisse de Zoologie/Swiss Journal of Zoology” (RSZ), were published.
In 2023, two regular and a supplementary issues of our scientific journal, the “Revue suisse de Zoologie/Swiss Journal of Zoology” (RSZ), were published. The supplement is a monograph on scorpions written by Lionel Monod, research officer at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Genève (MHNG), and represents the first part of an Atlas of Australasian hormurid scorpions. Volume 130 of the “Revue” included 27 open access articles on a total of 397 pages. Thirteen of these contributions were from staff members of the MHNG. In total, 56 new species were described, including a cryptic bat species from Corsica. These publications are representative of the leading role of Switzerland in the description of
biodiversity worldwide. Publications also included phylogenetic, faunistic and DNA barcoding studies.
Our annual conference, biology23, which is organized jointly by the SZS, the Swiss Botanical Society (SBS), and the Swiss Society for Systematic Biology (SSS), took place on February 16-17 at the University of Geneva. The keynote speakers were Elena Conti (University of Zurich), Tim Coulson (University of Oxford), Laurent Excoffier (University of Bern) and Catherine Graham (WSL). Our “Darwin Speaker” was Sonya Clegg from the University of Oxford (see https://biology23.unige.ch/ for details). We would like to thank the local organizers for this successful event!
At our annual meeting we were able to award a “travel grant for junior scientists” to Diana Rendon (Natural History Museum Basel) and to Julie Fahy (University of Geneva).