Fish skeletal biology is concerned with the mechanisms involved in the evolution, development, adaptation and maintenance of the skeleton of the majority of the vertebrates. It takes advantage from the growing interest in teleosts as model organisms for developmental and biomedical research, such as zebrafish and medaka, but also from the increasing number of fish species used in aquaculture. As it is always the case in science, there is amazing progress and at the same time we are far from understanding all aspects of fish skeletal biology. Understanding the fish skeleton requires insights from disciplines such as Palaeontology, Evolutionary and Developmental Biology, Morphology, Physiology, Nutrition, Ichthyology, Biomechanics, Systematics, Biomineralisation, Genomics and Proteomics. There is clearly a demand for more interdisciplinary research. The 3rd international conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches in Fish Skeletal Biology is meant as a platform to establish just that kind of interdisciplinary research! It is organized as a conference with oral and poster presentations, but foremost it is a forum for discussions, for the exchange of ideas and hypotheses. The previous two conferences have been published in two volumes of the Journal of Applied Ichthyology, which provide a unique overview about the current status of fish skeletal research. We continue this series of conference proceedings and thus we offer again the possibility to all participants to publish their contributions as short articles. We thank all participants for coming to the 3rd conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches in Fish Skeletal Biology and welcome you all to Tavira. We also thank our sponsors for supporting this conference.

We wish you a fruitful and scientifically stimulating conference!

Organizers:

M. Leonor Cancela and P. Eckhard Witten

Scientific committee:

Brian K. Hall, Tom J. Hansen, Matthew P. Harris, Ann Huysseune, Santosh P. Lall, Paula Mabee, Isabel Palmeirim, Leonor Saúde, Stefan Schulte-Merker, Jean-Yves Sire, Christoph Winkler

Local organizing committee:

Vincent Laizé, Paulo J. Gavaia, Evi Desender, Natércia Conceição, Ignacio Fernández