Report of the 2022 Protistology Nordics meeting

PROTISTOLOGY Nordics (PiN) met May 10–11, 2022, at the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo, Norway. PiN was designed to promote scientists in Nordic countries who study genetics, cell biology, ecology, and evolution of protists. The aims of the meeting were to provide a regional forum for early career and advanced researchers to present their work, and to establish a society that will continue to meet and promote protistan research. PiN 2022 had long coffee breaks and much longer lunch breaks to allow for plenty of time to have the discussions among the participants, which often lead to new collaborations and friendships. During these long breaks, participants were able to walk around the Museum's botanical garden or walk into the Museum's zoological and geological buildings.

The meeting was co‐organized by Micah Dunthorn (University of Oslo, Norway), Courtney Stairs (Lund University, Sweden), and Fabien Burki (Uppsala University, Sweden). The assistant organizers were Anders Alfjorden (Uppsala University, Sweden), Karla Iveth Aguilera Campos (Lund University, Sweden), Megan Gross (University of Oslo, Norway; Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany), and Ioana Onuț‐Brännström (Uppsala University, Sweden). Corey Holt (University of British Columbia, Canada) designed PiN's logo. Thirty‐nine participants attended the meeting (Figure S1).

PiN's first keynote lecture was by Bente Edvardsen (University of Oslo, Norway) who talked about “Exploration of protist diversity and distribution in the ocean by a polyphasic approach,” where she discussed the prospects and challenges of combining complementary morphological and molecular methods to better understand phytoplankton communities and ecology. The second keynote lecture was by Jon Jerlström‐Hultqvist (Uppsala University, Sweden) who talked about “Long‐read metagenomics as a tool to understand symbiosis,” where he discussed how the anaerobic Anaeramoeba modulates and controls the vacuoles in which its bacterial symbionts (Desulfobacter sp.) reside. Twenty‐two contributed talks were presented across four sessions. Six contributed posters were presented in a single session. The best talk was given by Nina Pohl (University of Cologne, Germany) for the presentation on “The wastewater protist Rhogostoma minus (Thecofilosea, Rhizaria) is abundant, widespread, and hosts Legionellales.” The second‐best talk was given by Megan Gross for the presentation “O Short‐branch Microsporidia, Where Art Thou?—Identifying diversity hotspots for future sampling.” The best poster was given by Mara Vizitiu (Lund University, Sweden) for the presentation on “The Gene They Keep on Giving: lateral gene transfer from protists could enable freshwater sponges to adapt to hypoxia.” And the second‐best poster was given by Margarita Skamnelou (Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Spain) for the presentation “Isolation and characterization of two novel species of choanoflagellates.” The Program and Abstract Book is available here (File S1).

The International Society of Protistologists (ISOP) supported PiN 2022 by providing funds for travel/housing awards for students and postdocs who were ISOP members, and for general running costs. Talks were streamed using ISOP's Zoom license. The Natural History Museum supported PiN 2022 by providing the meeting rooms, and by providing free access to the zoological and geological buildings.

Supporting information

Appendix S1

Dunthorn, M. (2022) Report of the 2022 Protistology Nordics meeting. Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, 69, e12928. Available from: 10.1111/jeu.12928