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Dear fellow Dipterist and Entomologist: On behalf of the Council for the International Congresses of Dipterology, the Congress Organizing Committee and the Costa Rican Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) we invite you to attend and participate in the 7th International Congress of Dipterology in San José, Costa Rica, from 8 to 13 August, 2010.
This will be the first congress to be held in a tropical megadiverse country. Costa Rica, with only 51000 square kilometers in area, hosts an estimated 4.5 % of the world’s biodiversity in its territory, 25% of which is devoted to protected wildlands (National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, Forest Reserves and Protected Zones). High mountain ranges and volcanoes, mangroves, wetlands, seasonal tropical dry forests, tropical rainforests, cloud forests, and paramo are part of the landscape. The biota of Costa Rica comprise elements from the North American and South American subcontinents which meet in this recently formed land bridge. All of this explains the rich biodiversity found in this beautiful country, located in Central America, 10 degrees North of the Equator with Nicaragua to the north, and Panama to the east as neighboring countries, and in between the Caribbean Sea to the northeast and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest.
All major fields of Dipterology, from systematics and taxonomy, ecology and behavior, morphology and physiology, to vector control and agriculture, dababases and collections, biodiversity and conservation, forensics and therapeutic Diptera, developmental biology, genetics and functional genomics will be covered by the program, which includes symposia, taxon-based workshops and forums.
No doubt this will be a great opportunity to share your experience, become acquainted with the most recent advances and to be part of the growing discipline of Dipterology.
I look forward to meeting you in San José, August 2010.
Manuel A. Zumbado
Chairman, 7th International Congress of Dipterology
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