The meeting season is finally over. Now is the time to remind myself what a scientific gathering is really like. This way, I may yet gather the courage to decline the pressing invitation from my old friend who’s trying to get me to the shores of Lake Erie in February 1998 for her fabulous meeting on the chiral centers of bubblyomuctase reductase. The first treat is getting ready to go. If you’r...

For evolutionary biologists reptiles and islands provide rich pickings. One of the world’s largest land reptiles, the komodo dragon, is confined to just a couple of small Indonesian islands, and one of the rarest snakes is found on an islet off the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Even the heavily touristed Mediterranean island of Mallorca boasts its own lizard species on an offshore islet. But f...

Climate warming has forced the distribution of several fish stocks in one of Europe's major fishing grounds many kilometres north or to greater depths to find cooler waters, according to a study by climate change scientists. The distribution of major fish species, including cod and haddock, has shifted in response to an average 1 o C rise in the temperature at the bottom of the North Sea over t...