The Hellenic Institute of Speleological Research (HISR) and the Natural History Museum of Crete (NHMC) of the Univ. of Crete, invite you to the 13th International Symposium on the Biology of Terrestrial Isopods (ISTIB13) to be held at the premises of the NHMC, in Irakleion city, Crete, Greece, from 2 to 5 July 2026, celebrating the return of ISTIB to Crete after 25 years!
The ISTIB series, aiming to bring together all colleagues studying the amazing Oniscidea, began in 1983 in London, UK, and has continued undisrupted every 3 to 4 years: Urbino, Italy (1986); Poitiers, France (1990); Haifa, Israel (1997); Irakleion, Greece (2001); Aveiro, Portugal (2004); Tunis, Tunisia (2007); Bled, Slovenia (2011), Poitiers, France (2014), Budapest, Hungary (2017), Ghent, Belgium (2021 – virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic), and Olomouc, The Czech Republic (2023).
Like all previous meetings, ISTIB13 will accommodate contributions from all fields that use and/or focus on our beloved animals, such as taxonomy/systematics, evolutionary biology, morphology/anatomy, developmental biology, (eco)physiology, ecology, biogeography, molecular biology, behavior, etc.
The motto of the 5th meeting in Crete was "Oniscidea rolling into the new millennium". Now, 25 years later, they have made their way into the millennium for good and we hope that soon they’ll take their due place at the forefront of scientific research!
We hope you will be able to attend and benefit from the interactions among the members of our relatively small but solid and productive community.
Organizing Committee
- Spyros Sfenthourakis (Chair)
- Kaloust Paragamian (Director of HISR)
- Nikos Poulakakis (Director of NHMC)
- Apostolos Trichas (Curator of Arthropods in NHMC)
- Andreas Dimitriou
- Maria Kantzaridou
- Stefania Farsari
Contact email: info@istib.eu