During March 14-18 2011, the 5th International Zooplankton Production Symposium, themed as “Population Connection, Community Dynamics, and Climate Variability”, was held in Pucón, Chile. This is the first time that the conference comes to the south hemisphere. Near 400 scientists from 40 countries, most of them traveled long distance, shared their advances in zooplankton study during the past five years. As remarks in the closing speech by Prof. Roger Harris, the former chairman of Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics program and now chief-editor of the oxford Journal of Plankton Research, “such a fruitful symposium worth all the long travels, and the added carbon emissions finally paid off!”
Nine sessions, five workshops and a general poster session were included in this symposium. Besides traditional topics like life histories, ecological interactions, biogeochemical cycles, upwelling and coastal ecosystems, some brand new ideas, such as impacts of ocean acidification, small-scale biological-chemical-physical interactions, automated visual plankton identification, were also deeply discussed. World wide zooplankton problems, most importantly jellyfish blooms and decadal variability caused by climate change, attracted most attentions. All scientists agreed that zooplankton data of long time series and new techniques are the most promising aspects in future studies, and will contribute significantly to the ecological control of disasters caused by unexpected prosperity of zooplankton. Zooplankton in polar ecosystems and extreme environments, which suffered most seriously from global warming, was also specially issued.
Four Chinese scientists from Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. SUN Song, LI Chao-Lun, SUN Xiao-Xia and ZHANG Guang-Tao, attended the conferences, with oral or poster presentations on life strategies, molecular ecology, visual identification and polar zooplankton, respectively. Leaflets of the first Chinese Jellyfish Ecology Program were also distributed on the conference. As the chief scientist of this program, Dr. SUN Song exchanged ideas of jellyfish research with many famous zooplankton specialists, who are in expectation of achievements and final success of both the Chinese program and programs from other countries.