9th Indo-Pacific Fish Conference Review

The 9th Indo-Pacific Fish Conference (IPFC9) was held in Okinawa, Japan from 24th to 28th June 2013. Five hundred and thirty two delegates from 36 countries/regions around the world attended. The Conference took place with a welcome address by Dr. Keiichi Matsuura in the Laguna Garden Hotel next to the Okinawa Convention Center in the evening of 23rd June 2013, one day before the official start of the IPFC9. The winners of the two IPFC9 Bleeker Awards, Jeffrey M. Leis (Ecology) and Gerald R. Allen (Systematics) provided excellent talks on "Change in the early life-history of Indo-Pacific Fishes" and "The center of Indo-Pacific reef fish diversity". A total of 462 papers were presented, including 328 oral and 134 poster presentations. The main themes of IPFC9 included systematics, evolution, zoogeography and phylogeography, biodiversity, ecology, behavior, and conservation. There were 14 symposia, which included topics such as "Top predatory fish in the Indo-Pacific ecosystems", "Fish diversity across environmental extremes", "Ontogeny and systematics of Indo-Pacific fishes", and "Phylogenetics and diversification of the Percomorpha". IPFC10 will be held in Papeete, Tahiti.