This year, Pol Sorigue earned the prestigious Vitor Almada Award for his captivating presentation, "Molecular evolution of the genes involved in social behavior across Lake Tanganyika's cichlids adaptive radiation!"

Additionally, SPRINGER acknowledged excellence this year awarding Amalia de la Torre Herrera with the top prize for the best poster, featuring "Automated Monitoring of Pair Bonds in a Gregarious Bird," and recognizing Beatriz Palinhos Pereira's compelling talk on "Disruption of cleaner wrasse cognition and brain morphology under marine heatwaves" as the second-best student oral presentation.

Spicing up the conference, we partnered with AIMM to introduce an interactive bingo game during oral presentations this year. The participants Francisco Louro and Nádia Jesus, each snagged an AIMM sweatshirt, and Iolanda Silva walked away with a SPE t-shirt.