Bivalves 2023—Where are we going? An overview of an international meeting

During an unexpected heatwave, just over 100 scientists, from more than 15 different countries attended ' Bivalves 2023-Where are we going?' held at the University of Cambridge (UK) between 5 and 8 September 2023, a meeting organized by Liz Harper, John Taylor, Emily Glover and Katie Collins ( Fig. 1 ).This was the first international meeting specifically focussed on bivalves since Barcelona in 2006, itself a successor of previous bivalve meetings that took place in London (1977), Drumheller (1995) and Cambridge (1999).Just as significantly, it occurred after the restrictions of the global pandemic and a key aim was to provide an open, relaxed, in-person meeting where old interests could be rekindled and new collaborations and friendships forged.Pleasingly 28% of the attendees were undergraduate or postgraduate students.The conference title posed a question: ' Bivalves-where are we going?'During the nearly 20 years since we had all last met, there have been exciting developments-new methods, most obviously the advances in molecular phylogeny but also novel morphometric techniques, quality-controlled databases, new discoveries and increasingly detailed sampling.We deliberately did not solicit specific contributions and aimed to welcome all.Instead, we wanted to focus on what has been achieved recently.Where is the active research?Where, perhaps, has there been less activity but promise of new breakthroughs?We had a full programme, and it was heartening to see a wide variety of topics, with marine, freshwater, fossil and living taxa well represented.This special issue is a collection of 20 papers associated with just some of the 69 oral and 29 poster contributions presented at the meeting.They represent the diversity of approaches explored at the meeting.