We thank all participants for joining us at IAFSB, thus making this conference possible. IAFSB conferences would also not be possible without many hours of volunteer work of the local organising committee.

IAFSB aims to be a little bit different from other established meetings in the field. It is a logical trend in the sciences that as a field grows, more specific areas of discussion are formed – however, it is helpful to step back and have the chance to talk across disciplines. Instead of disseminating discussion of work between often disparate fields of aquaculture, development, ichthyology, paleontology, or medicine, At IAFSB we focus to maintain a multidisciplinary focus to gain a deeper understanding of our broader field of interest – the skeleton. As we are all bony fishes ourselves the comparative approach can effectively bridge all disciplines from paleontology to biomedical research. However, This creates the need for discussion across disciplines. IAFSB aims at providing time, space and occasions for these discussions. We hope you will have a great and successful IAFSB conference.

P. Eckhard Witten, Matthew P. Harris, and M. Leonor Cancela

Scientific committee

Brian K. Hall, Gert Flik, Marc Muller, Ann Huysseune, Santosh P. Lall, Per Gunnar Fjelldal, Christoph Winkler, Clara Boglione, Stefan Schulte-Merker

Local organizing committee

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