Trematodes 2024: the inaugural international meeting for trematode researchers

Abstract

Inspired by the various meetings held for other specific parasite lineages, two eminent scientists- Isabel Blasco Costa (Natural History Museum of Geneva) and Scott Cutmore (Queensland Museum)- focused on the Trematoda, organised a comparable meeting for this group of parasites, the richest of the metazoan parasite lineages. Thus, the inaugural Trematodes meeting was held in September 2024, hosted at the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia, featuring trematode taxonomy and systematics, evolution, life cycles, ecology, pathology and disease, and biogeography. In this TrendsTalk, we invited one of the organisers, Storm Martin, and the contingent of fellow early-career trematode enthusiasts in attendance, to outline the vision and future for the meeting series and to report and reflect on the science presented, ideas discussed, and the collective experience from this first meeting.