Back from the GRS/GRC Animal-Microbe Symbioses and elected as next co-chair for the 2021 GRS!

Back home from the GRS/GRC Animal-microbe symbioses meeting of 2019, great as always. It certainly felt long, but the science and networking was great. I ran into some friends which I barely get to see and had a lot of interesting discussions during the poster sessions and social hours. This year there were a ton of symbiotic systems being presented as both posters and talks: the Hawaiian bobtail squid and their light organ endosymbionts, phloem feeder insects and their nutritional obligate bacteria, the fruit fly and Wolbachia, the defensive symbionts of digger wasps (beewolves), among many others. I presented my work on the serial horizontal gene transfer and the origin/establishment of new obligate nutritional endosymbionts in Cinara aphids (doi: 10.1101/556274). Additionally, I am very happy that I, along with Nancy Obeng, was elected to be co-chair for the upcoming 2021 (***EDIT*** delayed to 2023) GRS Aminal-microbe symbioses! (which will hopefully happen in Italy, fingers crossed).