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News
If you want to share any
Tardigrada
related news, please
e-mail
us.
[Last update:
14-12-2022]
Date |
News |
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08.12.2022

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The Tardigrade Story –
250th Anniversary of the Discovery
Dear friends and colleagues,
Everything started with Johann August Ephraim Goeze, a protestant pastor in Quedlinburg, Germany. In his hours of rest, he refreshed himself with the microscopic examination of the boundless wealth of nature he found in water. And that led to the first discovery and description of a small animal which looked similar to a little bear. Therefore, he gave these animals the name “kleiner Wasserbär” (small water bear) in 1773.
In 2023 we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the discovery of these fascinating animals. Join this comprehensive tardigrade online series. 12 leading international scientists from Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Sweden and USA will give us an insight into the exciting life of tardigrades.

In each month of the anniversary year 2023, we move between the 18th century and the present – from the first sketch Johann August Ephraim Goeze drew in 1773 to the most modern research methods. Everyone can take part in this lecture series. It doesn’t matter if you are a pupil, student, scientist or just an ordinary citizen interested in these animals. Some may simply want to learn general information, others may be interested in specific topics.
Follow the link www.tardigrade-online.org or scan the QR code to get more information. Here you get more information about the keynote speakers and can choose which keynote lectures you would like to attend. Can’t make the date? No problem. Once you have registered, you can watch the recording online for the next 30 days, so you can catch up whenever it’s convenient.

Please circulate this information.
We look forward to you joining us!
Yours faithfully,
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28.08.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Sixteenth Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I hope you have now fully recovered after the
Banquet ;-)
Once again thank you very much for coming to Kraków
and for presenting your research at the Symposium.
It was so great to finally meet after a long 4-year
break, to see both familiar and new faces!
In addition to printed certificates with holographic
seals that you received on Friday, I’ll send you PDF
certificates (digitally signed, which makes them
legal documents) via email later today.
We’ll create an online Symposium Photoalbum
with the photos and videos taken by our photographer,
Adam Koprowski,
and with photos and videos you’ll send us. If you
want to share your photos/videos, please upload them
to a cloud of your choice and send me the download
link to
krakow@tardigrada.net (here’re some most popular
cloud services:
WeTransfer.com,
SendSpace.com,
GoogleDrive,
DropBox,
OneDrive,
iCloud). Please don’t send us the photos as
email attachments. Please send us your download
links by 11.09.2022.
Some of you asked if it’d be possible to make your
presentations and/or posters available online. It’s
a great idea, so if you’d like to share your
presentation/poster(s)
please fill this form by
04.09.2022 and we’ll upload your PPTX or
PDF files onto the Symposium Website for everyone to
download them for one month. Otherwise your
presentation will not be made publicly available and
it will be deleted.
Following your requests, the new (and final!)
deadline for submitting manuscripts to the
Symposium Proceedings is 30.11.2022.
When preparing your manuscripts, please make sure
you carefully follow the
Manuscript Guidelines.
Have a safe homeward journey or, if you decided to
stay in Kraków for a bit longer, enjoy sightseeing!
Already looking forward to seeing you all again in
Japan in 2025!
Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
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21.08.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Fifteenth Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We are all ready and waiting for your arrival!
Safe and hassle-free journeys! :-)
Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
|
20.08.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Fourteenth
Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Just to let you know that the
Symposium Book with all abstracts and other
useful information has just been published on the
Symposium website. In order to save some trees,
we’ll provide you only with a printed pocket-sized
mini-programme with talk titles, whereas the full Symposium
Book is available solely in a digital form. To
make it easier to use, the Table of Contents and all
presentation titles are hyperlinked and you can go
back to the Table of Contents by clicking the header
on each page. There’s also a small guide included on
how to aid the navigation through the
Symposium Book.
Important information
regarding talks: Please name your
presentations according to the following key:
session number (1–9), a
hyphen (-), talk number
within your session (1–6), a hyphen (-), and the
surname of the presenting author
without special characters/accents (basic Latin
alphabet only, no underscores please). For example,
the first talk on Monday should be named as “1-1-Mapalo.pptx”
(and/or “1-1-Mapalo.pdf”), the last
talk on Monday: “2-5-Pust.pptx”,
the second last talk in the morning session on
Tuesday: “3-4-Lopez-Lopez.pptx”,
the first talk in the second session on Friday: “9-1-Concordet.pptx”,
etc. This will greatly help us with session
organisation.
Please contact the IT Support (two
guys,
Konrad
and
Szymon, with black Symposium
badges) to upload your presentation onto the Lecture
Hall computer (using your laptop is possible but not
recommended). Please upload your talk no
later than 30 minutes before your session.
Last but not least – breaking
news – the Wawel Dragon (Smok Wawelski) has awoken
for our Symposium and you may enjoy trying to find
him in the Old Town and the Royal Castle by
downloading this app onto your smartphone:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pl.cinematicvr.smokwkrakowie
;-)
Have a great weekend and see you
on Monday morning at the
Auditorium Maximum!
Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
|
15.08.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Thirteenth Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
COVID-19 infection
rates in Poland have been low compared to the Spring
wave. Thus, currently no COVID-19 tests or
quarantine is required upon arrival to Poland.
However, the situation is dynamic and unpredictable
to some extent, so please keep checking the latest
information on travel restrictions at least a few
days prior to your arrival to Kraków.
Please note that
today is the
last day to fill out
the yellow form and/or
the red form
if would like assistance upon your arrival and/or
examine microscope slides from our collection.
There’s a new
subsection of the Symposium website with a few
suggestions of extra activities you might want try
while being in
Kraków.
We don’t want to give too much away about the
wonderful Symposium gifts we have for you, but
Participants with the Full Symposium Package (***)
are kindly requested to keep some free room in their
luggage for a VIP gift (28×24×10 cm of space and 3
kg of weight).
You might have wondered
why sessions have different background colours in
the Programme (Biodiversity is green, Ecology is
blue, Morphology is pink, and Physiology is black).
This is so, because
Kamil Janelt
and I have we prepared themed illustrations for each
section, and every one of these illustrations has a
dominating colour. The illustrations will be
revealed before each of the sessions, and on
Wednesday everyone will get a set of postcards
featuring these illustrations (+ a postcard with the
Symposium logo):


While packing and polishing your presentations, stay
tuned for the next Announcement, as The Symposium
Book with all abstracts will be published later this
week.
See you next Monday!
:-)
Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
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05.08.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Twelfth Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I’m happy to let you know that the detailed
Symposium Programme with talk and poster titles
is now available on the Symposium website.
Moreover, two
further sections, which I hope you may find helpful,
are now available:
Venue
and
Polish Essentials.
Also, please don’t
forget to fill out
the yellow form
and/or
the red form
by 15.08.2022 if would like
assistance upon your arrival and/or examine
microscope slides from our collection.
Finally, a message
for Young Scientist Award Contestants: these shiny
Symposium medals with Polish flag ribbons are ready
and waiting to be presented (in addition to
financial awards) to authors of two best talks (gold
medals) and two best posters (silver medals) in the
categories of Zoology and Physiology:

Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
|
27.07.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Eleventh Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The Symposium is now less than a month away and we
have as many as three online forms for you to fill
out... but don’t worry, they’re not obligatory.
The yellow
form is for those of you who
would like some help with getting from the Kraków
Airport to the City. Our Volunteers, in bright
yellow T-shirts with the Symposium logo, will be at
the Arrival Hall on Sunday (21.08.2022) and will
show you the way to the transportation of your
choice (train, bus, taxi), as well as help you to
buy appropriate tickets. Please fill out the form by
15.08.2022.
The red form
is for those who would like to examine type
specimens deposited at the Jagiellonian University
Collection. The types will be available during the
Microscope Slide Examination on Friday afternoon.
There will be two light contrast microscopes (LCMs)
with digital cameras and computers. If you wish to
take measurements and/or photos, please bring a USB
pendrive with you to save your files. We also
encourage you to bring your own slides to the
Symposium (at least one LCM will be available
throughout the entire Symposium). Please fill out
the form also by 15.08.2022.
The
blue form is for those of you
who would like buy a souvenir T-shirt with the
Symposium logo when you arrive to Kraków (we have
some really cool gifts for you in the Welcome Pack,
but T-shirts are not included).
Here is the guide to size categories both for male
and female T-shirt models and to the fabric palette
(40 colours to choose from!). Price per
T-shirt (regardless of the cut, fabric colour or
T-shirt size) is 45 PLN. An exemplary dark
and bright colour T-shirt are shown below (the
difference is in the outline of the logo: bright
T-shirts have black outlines whereas dark T-shirts
are with white outlines):

If you’d like to purchase T-shirt(s), please fill
out the
T-shirt Order Form by 03.08.2022 (thus,
there’s only a week to order the T-shirts and no
orders or cancellations after this date will be
possible). Please note that if you order your
T-shirt(s) you must pay and collect them during the
Symposium (both cash and card payments will be
accepted).
See you soon!
Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
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25.07.2022

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PostDoc position in the
Pienaar Lab at the Florida International University
The position will focus on
developing and analysing RNAseq data related to
desiccation in heterotardigrades and eutardigrades.
Detailed information under:
https://facultycareers.fiu.edu/?posting=527272
Sent in by:
Jason
Pienaar
|
01.07.2022
 |
XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Tenth Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Just to let you know that the preliminary Programme
Overview of the Symposium is now available.
More information soon.
See you next month! :-)
Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
|
12.06.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Ninth Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Now that the Cancellation Deadline has passed and
all abstracts have been submitted, we have prepared
a new section of the website comprising
Presentation Guidelines. Please get familiar
with the guidelines and prepare your presentations
accordingly.
The good news is that COVID-19 cases in Poland are
already hitting summer lows, i.e. ca. 250 cases and
3 death per day across the entire country.
On a different note, we happy to announce that the
Rector of the Jagiellonian University has taken the
Symposium under his
patronage.
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
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19.05.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Eight Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
A quick reminder that the extended Late
Registration deadline is only three days away, i.e.
this Sunday, May 22nd at midnight (CEST).
Thus, if you haven’t completed your registration via
our
Registration Platform, please do it as soon as
possible.
In case of any
problems with registration or payment, please
contact
Michał or
Kinga at
konferencje@uj.edu.pl (please don’t forget to
place “Tardigrada 2022: ” followed by the topic of
your query in the email subject line).
This is the last
Symposium Announcement circulated via the Tardigrada
Newsletter Mailing List. All future Announcements
will be sent from
krakow@tardigrada.net only to the registered
Symposium participants. Nevertheless, all
Announcements will continue to be published on the
Symposium website and
here.
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
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12.05.2022
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Juliana Hinton
retirement
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
After four decades of service at
McNeese State University my
colleague and friend, Professor
Juliana Hinton, is retiring this
month. Some of you may remember
Juliana from the Symposia she
attended. From 2007 to 2019 Juliana
and I co-authored 22 papers on
tardigrades. I've never known anyone
who loves water bears more than her.

Juliana
at the 12th
International Symposium on
Tardigrada in Portugal.
If you would like to extend
Juliana your best wishes in her
retirement, her email is
jhinton@mcneese.edu
Harry
Harry A. Meyer,
PhD
Professor
Department of Biology
McNeese State University
Lake Charles, Louisiana 70609
USA
|
15.04.2022
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XV International Symposium
on Tardigrada - the Seventh Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
This is just a quick reminder that the extended Early Registration
deadline is next Friday, i.e. there’s
only one week
left to register with the Early Registration fees.
Thus, if you haven’t completed your registration via
our
Registration Platform, please do it as soon as
possible to avoid paying the Late Registration fees,
which all are 25% higher than the Early Registration
fees.
Please note that registering under the Early Registration fees requires:
(1) filling the registration form, (2) paying the
registration fee, and (3) submitting your
abstract(s) if you want to give a talk or/and
present your poster(s). Submitting your abstract(s)
after 22.04.2022 will mean that you will have to pay
the Late Registration fee in order to present at the
Symposium.
If for any reason you cannot come to the Symposium
but you’d still like to present your poster in
absentia, you can register, send us your poster in
PDF, and we will print and display it for you.
In case of any problems with registration or payment, please contact
Michał
or Kinga at
konferencje@uj.edu.pl (please don’t
forget to place “Tardigrada 2022: ” followed by the
topic of your query in the email subject line).
COVID-19 infection and death rates in Poland are now low and constantly
decreasing:

Data source:
Polish Ministry of Health; graph: Flourish Studio
(modified).
Thus, it seems that the rates are very likely to diminish to nearly zero
in the summer, as predicted based on the last two
summers.
As always, we kindly ask you to spread the news about the Symposium
wherever you can!
Cannot wait to see you all this summer in Kraków!
😊
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
|
29.03.2022
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XV International
Symposium on Tardigrada - the Sixth
Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I hope this message finds you well and healthy.
I have received numerous requests to extend the
deadline, as some of you need more time to finalise
abstracts and secure funds to pay the registration
fees (please remember that abstract submission
deadlines are the same as registration deadlines).
Therefore, to accommodate your appeals, the Early
Registration deadline is now extended to 22.04.2022,
whereas the new Late Registration is 22.05.2022,
and the new Cancellation deadline is 06.06.2022.
The Early Registration countdown has now been reset
to the extended date.
Some of you are also concerned about whether the
Russian aggression against Ukraine may affect the
Symposium. I would like to emphasise that Poland is
a member of NATO and as such, the risk of military
actions on the territory of Poland is negligible.
Moreover, despite welcoming a large number of
Ukrainian refugees (or guests, as we refer to them),
life in Kraków is business as usual (see photos
below). Most importantly, however, in the unlikely
case that the Symposium cannot be held in Kraków in
August 2022, everyone who registered will be able to
vote on whether they want to postpone the Symposium
and come to Kraków in 2023 or whether they would
like the Symposium to be held online. In other words,
registration entails no risk of losing your funds.
While we are on the subject of Ukraine, I am happy
to announce that all Ukrainian citizens and
residents affiliated with Ukrainian institutions,
who left the country on or after 24.02.2022 or are
currently in Ukraine and wish to apply for a Travel
Grant, are exempt from age limits and from paying
the registration fee in advance.
I also have some good news regarding the COVID-19
situation in Poland. The omicron wave has plummeted
much faster than predicted and the current infection
and death rates are similar to those at the end of
April 2021, so we are one month ahead in the desired
direction compared to the last year. This
significantly strengthens the predictions based on
the two last years that the rates are expected to
diminish to nearly zero in the summer (see the
subsection devoted to
COVID-19 for more details).
Here are a couple of photos I took yesterday
afternoon in the Old Town and at the river to show
you that although the overall mood is not cheerful,
life goes on as usual:

The Main Square with locals and
some foreign tourists.

Grodzka Street with locals
and tourists.

A group of tourists from
North America in the Maria Magdalena Square.

People catching spring
sunrays at the Vistula River close to the Royal
Castle.

The Wawel Dragon breathing
fire as usual and kids teasing the Dragon, also as
usual.
I hope that this reassures those who might be
worried. Kraków is safe and we will do everything to
make your stay as pleasurable, inspiring, and
healthy as possible.
Best Wishes,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
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10.03.2022
|
The Royal Society
Anhydrobiosis Meeting online on March 21-23rd 2022
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Anhydrobiosis Meeting will be
held with the support from the Royal Society online
on 21-23rd March, 2022.
The programme for a meeting entitled
“Anhydrobiosis – Cheating death and telling the
tale” has been published online yesterday
by the Royal Society. If you are interested in
protein phase separations, stress responses in
plants and animals (tardigrades), protein
structure-function studies, genome analysis,
desiccation and climate change mitigation, then this
conference has something for you. It is free to
attend, but I would ask that you register with the
Royal Society via the link below:
https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2022/03/anhydrobiosis-cheating-death-and-telling-the-tale
Now the meeting programme has been published, please
feel free to share the above link with those whom
you think would be interested. There is a
world-class speaker lineup for the meeting. It is
split over 3 days (March 21-23rd) from 12:00 till
approximately 15:30 and it is perfectly OK for
people to come and go as they pick n’ mix topics and
speakers.
Time is very short, for which we can only apologise,
but should you or your colleagues wish to submit an
abstract then the deadline for this is
Monday 14th March. In addition to the
online abstract, we have planned flash talk sessions
for all poster presenters (2 mins to share the
highlights and draw in people to discuss your
poster).
All the very best and thank you for your support.
Roy
and
Takekazu
Sent in by:
Takekazu Kunieda
|
28.02.2022
 |
XV International
Symposium on Tardigrada - the Fifth
Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Just to let you know that our
Registration Platform is fully operational and
you can start registering for the Symposium (big
thanks
Kinga Rozwadowska
from the JU Conference Organisation Section for her
valuable help in setting up the Platform).
In case of any problems with registration or
payment, please contact
Kinga
or
Michał
at
konferencje@uj.edu.pl (please don’t forget to
type “Tardigrada 2022: ” followed by the topic of
your query in the email subject line).
Take care,
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
|
14.02.2022
 |
XV International
Symposium on Tardigrada - the Fourth
Announcement!
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am very pleased to
present you with the official website of the
15th International Symposium on
Tardigrada:
tardigrada.uj.edu.pl
Although a few
sections are yet to be published at later times (e.g.
the
Symposium Programme), the great majority of
subsites are fully operational and you are kindly
invited to explore them all. The most important
sections at this moment are: information on all
Deadlines related to the Symposium,
Fees & Payments, detailed
Abstract Guidelines (with a template to help you
prepare your abstracts), and the description of our
Registration Platform (which is aimed to be
launched by the end of the month). Those among us
who are still lucky to be enjoying their youth
may be interested in information about
Travel Grants and
Young Scientist Awards too. There are two
countdown clocks on the website: one showing how
much time is left until the Symposium (currently 188
days), and the other – displayed only in the
REGISTRATION section – counting down to the Early
Registration deadline (45 days left).
You may also find
useful the sections devoted to information and tips
on what are the best ways of
Getting to Kraków and how to find great
Accommodation in the Royal City (primary
suggestion: book as soon as possible, especially
that nowadays many booking services offer
reservations without prepayments or with fully
refunded cancellations up to a week prior to arrival).
Some of you may be hesitant to travel in the
COVID-19 era, thus there is a separate section
devoted only to
COVID-19 and how to make your trip to Kraków as
safe and as hassle-free as possible. Please check
out also the
Contact section and our kind request on how to
use the offered channels of communication to help us
help you efficiently.
Furthermore, I am
very happy to introduce the amazing
Invited Speakers who will deliver interesting
and inspiring keynote talks. I am also very happy to
confirm that the prestigious Zoological
Journal of the Linnean Society will kindly
host the
Symposium Proceedings (big thanks to
Maarten
Christenhusz,
Editor-in-Chief of the ZJLS, and the Oxford
University Press for making this possible).
I am also extremely
grateful to our
Sponsors (mainly the Polish Ministry of
Education and Science, but the Faculty of Biology of
the Jagiellonian University also chipped in), whose
generous support made it possible to organise an
attractive Symposium programme while keeping the
registration fees at affordable levels despite the
raging inflation and the global COVID-19 crisis (I
owe thanks to
Patrycja
Dąbrowska-Wierzbowska from the
JU Research Support Centre for helping me with the
Ministry application).
I hope you will
enjoy the Symposium website (huge cheers to
Michał Rdzanek from
the JU Conference Organisation Section for his
invaluable help in setting up the website; and to
Vladimir Gross for
proof-reading the contents). I also hope that you
will register as soon as the
Registration Platform comes to life (it is
currently being thoroughly tested to ensure smooth
registration, abstract submission and payment
processing).
Please forward this
Announcement to anyone who could be interested
in attending the Symposium, and please publicise
also the address of the Symposium website,
tardigrada.uj.edu.pl, by all possible means (social
media, newsletters, websites, blogs, etc.).
All the best in the
recently started New Year :-)
and lots of love on the occasion of St.
Valentine’s Day! <3
Łukasz Michalczyk
Chair of Tardigrada 2022
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Archival news
(2004-2021)
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