July 3, 2003

Contact: Daphne Fautin, Kansas Geological Survey, (785) 864-3062.

International biology group to hold first U.S. meeting at KU July 6-11

LAWRENCE -- Researchers from around the world who study corals and other ocean invertebrates will gather in landlocked Kansas for the first U.S. meeting of an international biology group next week.

The Seventh International Conference on Coelenterate Biology will take place at the University of Kansas July 6 through 11. Coelenterates include corals, jellyfish and other invertebrate animals, most of which live in sea water.

This is the first time this international conference will take place in the United States. About 200 scientists are expected to attend.

Part of the conference will consist of a meeting of the International Society for Reef Studies and will include presentations about the status of the earth's coral reefs. With the decline of reefs in many parts of the world, corals have been a topic of increasing interest in the world's scientific and environmental communities.

Researchers will present the most recent results of studies of reefs in Malaysia, the Red Sea, Taiwan, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, the West Indies, Kenya, Fiji, Florida, South Africa, Indonesia and other locations around the world. A number of the presentations focus on environmental stresses on coral reefs and the impact of global warming on corals.

The meeting also includes sessions on ecology, anatomy and physiology of the animals; deep sea biology; and two field trips -- one to the Konza Prairie and another to collect fossil corals in Shawnee and Coffey counties in eastern Kansas.

"About half of the attendees are from overseas, and most have never been to this part of the country," said Daphne Fautin, a KU biologist and one of the meeting organizers. "So in addition to the opportunity to catch up on the latest research on these animals, we are going to show off Kansas."

Conference sponsors include the KU Museum of Natural History, the Kansas Geological Survey, based at KU, the KU Division of Biological Sciences, the KU Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the KU Department of Molecular Biosciences, and the Center for Research Inc. at KU. For more information about the meeting, see the conference Web site, http://web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/iccb/.