The International Whitefly Symposium (IWS) is a series of specialized scientific meetings that resulted out of the merger of the international Bemisia workshop and the European Whitefly symposium. The 2nd IWS took place in Arusha, Tanzania from Feb 15th to 19th 2016. It aims to foster research and education around a broad range of whitefly related issues. Diverse topics were presented in eight sessions including: (1) Biology, Ecology and Invasion Biology, (2) Genomics and Genetic Diversity, (3) Systematics and Evolution, (4) Whitefly Endosymbionts, (5) Whiteflies as vectors of plant viruses, (6) Whitefly plant interactions, (7) Management control and IPM, (8) Chemical control, insecticide resistance and chemical ecology. More than 130 participants from 23 countries participated in the symposium.
Professor Liu Shusheng, Wang Xiaowei and Liu Yinquan from Institute of Insect Science were invited to give oral presentations titled “Temporal changes of bacterial symbionts and host fitness in two whiteflies following antibiotic treatments”, “Functional genomics in the whitefly species complex” and “Responses of symbiotic bacterial community in whitefly Bemesia tabaci to unfavorable high temperature”, respectively. Meanwhile, post-doctor Xu Hongxing, and Ph.D. students Zhu Dantong, Wang Xinru, Guo Tao and Sun Yanchun from the same lab also gave oral presentations during the symposium.
