OSTRACON-Mailing List

OSTRACON is the email platform for new distribution and for discussion of ostracod topics. Registration is easily done and for free. Subscribers can actively use this immediate way to get in contact with the entire community of ostracod workers, or remain silent and passively follow the communication. Particularly students should register and profit from email exchange within the community. Since unsubscribing is as easy as subscribing, there is no reason not to give OSTRACON a try! Announcements, requests, literature searches …. all this and more can be done through OSTRACON.

In the following, Prof. Rosalie Maddocks, who installed the OSTRACON email discussion list at the University of Texas in 1995, will give a more technical instruction. If you are working on ostracods, or interested in what is going on in the field of ostracod research, subscribe to OSTRACON!

Renate Matzke-Karasz (Chair of IRGO steering committee 2009-2013)

 __  __  __  __  __

OSTRACON is an electronic discussion group for Ostracoda running on the Listserv server at the University of Houston.

The Listowner is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.(formerly together with Roger L. Kaesler († 2007)).

To subscribe to OSTRACON, send the message:

SUBSCRIBE OSTRACON your full name

to the address:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

When the server asks you to confirm that you wish to subscribe, simply reply OK. Just two letters, OK, and it must be a reply rather than a new message.

Then save and read the two Welcome messages you will receive.

The purpose of this list is to facilitate interdisciplinary scientific discussion and exchange of information concerning Ostracoda. All persons who are conducting scientific research on any aspect of Ostracoda or who are interested in this topic are urged to subscribe. Students are specifically invited to participate.

This list is international. Standard English is preferred, simply because it is understood by the largest number of people, but subscribers are welcome to post or to reply to posts in any language.

Please add your e-mail address (some mail-readers do not pick this up automatically), your full name (no anonymous posts), and your affiliation or postal mailing address to the bottom of every post. An explicit subject heading is appreciated.

Discussions concerning Ostracoda that begin on the list should be answered on the list, rather than privately, so that other subscribers may hear the full conversation. Of course, private or personal correspondence should be conducted off-list by direct e-mail to the author. Semipersonal requests, such as whether anyone knows the e-mail address for a person, should include a statement such as "Please reply off-net."

Ordinarily advertisements are not allowed, but information of any kind related to Ostracoda is always desirable. If, for example, you have discovered a better kind of picking tray, or you have invented an improved picking brush, or your new book concerning Ostracoda has just been published, please share with us the information on where these may be purchased.

Copyright laws differ in different countries, and it is not yet clear how existing laws will apply to the Internet. It is best to assume that anything posted on this list may be read by the whole world. Naturally, if you wish to use any idea or statement from a post on this list in a publication, you should obtain permission from the author and credit it as an "informal electronic communication" by citing the author, the date, and the list name and address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

This list is unmoderated and unedited. However, intentionally offensive and off-topic posts will not be tolerated. We ask you to notice that customs of speech and styles of humor differ in different regions and cultures and to take this into consideration when posting to this list.

Ostrakon is a Greek noun meaning (1) a piece of earthenware, a tile, potsherd; (2) the hard shell of testacea, as snails, tortoises. Latreille in 1802 based the name Ostracoda on the related Greek form ostrakodes meaning testaceous. We selected the name for this list because it suggests Ostracoda-on-line and has eight letters.

Long-time readers of the literature of Ostracoda know that a bitter controversy has concerned the English spelling of the vernacular, as "ostracode" versus "ostracod." This list will accept both spellings and any others your keyboard may happen to substitute. (Admittedly, we both believe the first spelling to be "correct" and preferable. For a scholarly but light-hearted summary of this tedious issue, we suggest the paper by Richard H. Benson, 1981, The odds on "ode" in ostracode, or the omicron and omega of chancy spelling, Journal of Paleontology 55: 1200-1206. We further urge that the debate not be reopened on OSTRACON. We are as unlikely to settle the issue as we are to unite all religions and stamp out all disease.)

We use cookies on our website. Some of them are essential for the operation of the site, while others help us to improve this site and the user experience (tracking cookies). You can decide for yourself whether you want to allow cookies or not. Please note that if you reject them, you may not be able to use all the functionalities of the site.