I enjoyed the great fortune of attending a meeting on new model systems to link ecology and evolution, held May 8. - 11. in Heidelberg. D. Tautz and D. Weigel organized the meeting which brought together people studying evolutionary and ecological questions, interleaving genetic, organismal, microbial and biochemical data from many organisms. The taxanomic richness was quite intriguing, but also the range of questions and findings. We presented results from the Arctic charr studies, both the morphometric analyses and the transcriptome work, and got quite a lot of good feedback and suggestions. All in all it was a very inspiring meeting, with great atmosphere, talks, people and food. It did not spoil things that I got to visit my friend Natalia and see some great looking starfish.

Im looking forward to the next EMBL meeting on this topic.