This year, the Animal-Micobe Symbioses Gordon Research Conference will be accompanied for the first time with a Gordon Research Seminar (GRS). The GRS is a meeting organized by early-career scientists for early-career scientists. This seminar will bring together postdocs, graduate students, and others with comparable levels of expertise to present and discuss their findings at the forefront of symbiosis research through posters and oral contributions. The meeting will feature a stimulating and welcoming environment, ideal for fostering collaborations, conceiving new research directions, and networking with peers and mentors before attending the larger GRC meeting.

Like the associated Gordon Conference, the GRS is broad in scope, focused on beneficial relationships between hosts and microbes. Topics will include (but are not limited to) the genetics and genomics of symbionts and their hosts; impacts of symbiosis on host life history, evolution, and ecology; and the mechanisms of multilevel, multispecies interactions. Consequently, the meeting will unite researchers from genetics, genomics, chemistry, animal physiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Participants in the GRS are strongly encouraged to present their work at the associated Gordon Conference, which will immediately follow the GRS.