Welcome

The Series of International Otolith Symposium has travelled widely since 1993, and now we are delighted to host the 7th IOS in South America. The objective of this symposium is to know the scientific advances in otolith research and other calcified structures, as tools to address ecological and environmental problems in aquatic ecosystems and their resources.

The cyclical patterns deposited in otoliths and other calcified structures are very useful to elaborate chronologies which span, days, week, months, years, an even century, providing a great potential to record retrospective patterns of life history traits (e.g., age and growth rates and other demographic patterns), for a great variety of living organisms. Moreover, calcified structures also contain temporal records of chemical composition which can be used to reconstruct climatic and environmental changes at different spatial and temporal scales. In addition, when a calcified structure of an aquatic organism has been exposed to polluted environments, can provide a tool for a diagnostic of environmental condition. All the recorded information can be analyzed on a retrospective and prospective way to establish the relationships with environmental and anthropogenic based drivers, which can be very useful for ecosystem based-management under a scenario of global change.

The 7th IOS will provide an international forum for students and scientists from all continents to present their new studies, discuss on potential new applications, project future perspectives and expand their research networks. To date the following five events have been held since 1993:

a) 1th IOS (1993, South Carolina, USA)

b) 2th IOS (1998, Bergen, Norway,)

b) 3th IOS (2004, Townville, Australia)

c) 4th IOS (2009, Monterrey, USA)

d) 5th IOS (2014, Mallorca, Spain,)

e) 6th IOS (2018, Keelung, Taiwan)

We look forward to meeting you in Viña del Mar (Chile) on October 2023.