Feedback by DOMITILLE COQ-ETCHEGARAY, INRAe

The Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) was held at the Prague Congress Centre in Czech Republic from 14th to 19th August 2022. With up to 1600 participants, ~700 posters and ~500 talks in 40 different symposia the ESEB congress is one of the largest conferences in evolutionary biology with different topics such as: - Adaptation and evolution - Eco-evolutionary dynamics - Comparative genomics - Plasticity and evolution - and many more… We had great plenary talks each day by Kathleen Donohue, Hanna Kokko, Kayla King and Alexei Maklakov on different subjects “Ancestor traits effect in the present”, “Diversity and unity in nature”, “Host-parasite coevolution” or “Why do we age?”. Each day, we were able to create our scientific presentations journey between all the symposia held in parallel and finish the day with chips and beer during the poster sessions. I had the opportunity to present my work on the genetic architecture of leaf specialized metabolites (LSM) in sessile oaks (Quercus petraea) during the symposium S13 “Evolutionary ecology of chemically-mediated species interactions in plants”. The organizers of the symposium perfectly brought together scientists from evolution, chemistry or ecology to discuss how intraspecific or interspecific variation of chemical traits mediated biotic interactions. After the symposia a social event was organized, and allowed me to meet and interact with the other researchers who presented during the symposium. I am very grateful that the EVOLTREE committee supported me financially to present my work at this ESEB 2022. Attending this conference gave me the opportunity to discuss my work with many scientists and PhDs students from all over the world. The ESEB conference was my first conference “in person” and it was an extremely rewarding experience. And I was very happy to finally meet people from the 2021 EVOLTREE Conference in real life! To conclude, I was inspired by the words of Pr. Roger Butlin who said during his presentation on last day of the conference that scientific progress is achieved by: “Building together” and that “each brick matters”