CARBONDALE - For a brief five-day period this summer, Southern Illinois University Carbondale's mascot, the Saluki, will share the limelight with marine biology critters that come under a common family name called cephalopods.

The American Malacological Society is having its 74th annual meeting on the SIUC campus June 29 to July 3. Up to 200 biologists and researchers with an interest in marine life are expected to attend. They will travel here from throughout the United States and even a few foreign countries.

"I am hoping the symposiums we host will provide more details about describing the molosk species (snails, squids, clams, octopuses, oysters and scallops) as we advance into the 21st century," said associate professor Frank "Andy" Anderson, an associate zoology professor at SIUC who has been an AMS member since 1998 and is now the society's president.

Although most AMS annual meetings are held at coastal locations such as Monterrey, Calif., in 2005, or Seattle, Wash., in 2006, a Midwest town like Carbondale occasionally hosts the gathering.

Determining a meeting site is usually based on where the society president lives. Anderson has been at SIUC since 1999.

The special sessions and symposia will include a land snail conservation symposium and workshop, a symposium on molluscan taxonomy in the 21st century and a special session on cephalopod biology.

Two field trips are also scheduled, including a tour of the Larue Pine Hills/ Otter Pond Research Area in the nearby Shawnee Forest and other area aquatic habitats to search for freshwater bivalves and gastropods.

"This is a rare chance for cephalopod researchers across a number of disciplines to meet and perhaps strike up conversations that seed future grant proposals, field collaborations and papers," Anderson said.

scott.fitzgerald@thesouthern.com

351-5076