4th ASA Conference 2017 Chongqing, China
It is our great honour and pleasure to invite you to the Fourth Conference of Asian Society of Arachnology (ASA) (www.spidersofchina.com/hy/index.asp, or www.asianarachnology.com/conference2017/) and the Fifteenth Meeting of Arachnological Society of China (ASC). The ASA, found in 2012, is the regional scientific society of Arachnology of Asia and provides the primary forum for arachnologists by hosting annual conferences. The fourth conference of ASA is the first ASA meeting held in China, is also the first international meeting of Arachnology in China. The ASC, found in 1986, is a society for Chinese arachnologists to accelerate the development of Chinese Arachnology.
Arachnology is a traditional, but very active field that seeks to understand the diversity, systematics, evolutionary biology, behaviour, ecology, biogeography, physiology, developmental biology, molecular biology, conservation biology, etc. of spiders and other arachnids. In this conference, three symposia will be included: 1) Phylogeny, Genomics and Evolution; 2) Diversity and Systematics; 3) Behavior and Ecology.
Widely acknowledged as the largest industrial and economic center in southwestern China, Chongqing is a popular travel destination for its hilly slopes, rivers, night views and spicy foods. In 1997, it was set as the 4th municipality directly under the China central government. Now Chongqing is the youngest, but the largest city in terms of area (about 82.4 thousand km2) and population (more than 33.7 million).
Three famous “business cards” of Chongqing are thought as “delicious foods”, “splendid scenery” and “beautiful girls”.
This conference will be hosted by the Southwest University (SWU, www.swu.edu.cn). SWU was founded in July 2005, by the merger of two old Universities with more than 110 years’ history. Now SWU is a comprehensive and national key university sponsored by the Ministry of Education of China, with garden-like campus, about 3000 teachers and 50,000 full-time students.
We believe that the joint meeting of ASA and ASC 2017 will provide a platform to communicate new findings and technologies and the future development of Arachnology.
Extracted from circular(s) ahead of the conference.
Chongqing, China, 9-13 October, 2017
Organizer: Zhi-Sheng Zhang
Plenary Speakers
Jonathan A. Coddington (Smithsonian Institution, USA)
Mark S. Harvey (Western Australian Museum, Australia)
Daiqin Li (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
Miquel A. Arnedo (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Zhi-Qiang Zhang (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
