The 19th Larwood Symposium Oslo 2026
June 1-3, the 19th Larwood Symposium was held at Tøyen Hovedgård here at the Natural History Museum in Oslo. About 40 bryozoologists (+ accompanying persons) from about 15 countries spread over five continents made the trip to Oslo!
The Larwood Symposium is a smaller conference about everything bryozoan, and is held every year between the larger, international meetings that are held every three years (International Bryozoology Association conferences). So having participants from so many places in the world at our “local” European symposium was simply fantastic!
Several of the people involved in the NorDigBryo project presented their work during this symposium.
Among those who had traveled the furthest to come here was the bryozoologist Dennis Gordon from Aotearoa New Zealand. He is one of the people who knows the most about bryozoans in the entire world, so it was fantastic that Lee Hsiang Liow (project leader for NorDigBryo) received funding for a workshop the week before the conference. Then we were able to invite Dennis and other bryozoan experts to Oslo such as Paul D. Taylor, Leandro Vieira and Jo Porter.
Both Jo and Paul have participated in one or more of the NorDigBryo workshops that we have had during our NorDigBryo project!
The number of symposium participants meant that it took two days to get through all the talks that people wanted to give. In addition, several posters about various bryozoan themes were shown off. There were many different topics that were conveyed. Among other things, there was talk about non-indigenous species, genomes, fossils, evolution and taxonomy.
These types of conferences are important in terms of outreach, but also for students and early career researchers to do some networking. Here you get to meet experts with many decades of experience, and you get the opportunity to get answers to questions you have and maybe even plan collaborative projects.
On Wednesday, an excursion was organized to the Ringerike district, one and a half hours outside of Oslo, where we visited two fossil localities. The fossils date from around the middle of the Silurian (~430 million years ago) and consist of several species of bryozoans!
The excursion also included cultural elements. We visited Hadeland Glassverk, the oldest industrial company that is still operating since its foundation, and enjoyed lunch, ice cream and glass art in the nice weather. On the way back, we also visited Vigeland Park.
Planning and hosting the symposium was hectic, but it was worth it! We were very happy to receive nice feedback about the event, but also to hear that people had had a really good time in Oslo.
And we certainly couldn't have done it without our fantastic postdoc and PhD-students, who helped us with the planning and organizing!
