This is the 9th Gordon Research Conference on Plant-Herbivore Interactions (PHI GRC), to be held February 29-March 5, 2004 in Ventura, California. This very successful series will mark its 24th year with a program that looks to the future of our field. New and emerging approaches and topics were selected by surveying previous attendees, the broader community that studies plant herbivore interactions, and the recent literature and granting patterns in the US and Europe. The program features 24 scientists who have not appeared at previous PHI GRCs in at least 9 years, whose research is currently producing new and exciting results, and whose approaches include new methods or concepts.
Major topics will be: Microbial meddling in the lives of herbivores, Diets of Generalists, Host specialization in insects, Ecology of plant herbivore interactions, Multiple selection pressures, Plant allocation: theory and mechanism, Transgenic (GM) plants: Problems and promise, Interactions at multiple spatial & temporal scales. This program should follow the pattern of previous PHI GRCs and produce a highly diverse audience. An innovation of the 9th conference, which focuses on future developments in the study of plant-herbivore interactions, is the reservation of two 25-minute speaking slots for outstanding graduate students who will be chosen on the basis of their poster abstracts. All student applicants will be encouraged to submit abstracts. This conference can be expected to help direct future work on plant-herbivore interactions.
