Host-parasite interactions: resist or tolerate but never stop running

A conference exploring 'The impact of the environment on innate immunity: the threat of diseases' was held on 4-9 May 2009 in Obergurgl, Austria, thanks to the support from the European Science Foundation, Innsbruck University and the Austrian Science Foundation. The goals of the conference were to explore how the outcomes of host-parasite interactions depend on variation across individuals, their parasites and the environment in which they both find themselves. Central themes were the inherent costs of mounting an immune response, the ability of some organisms to pre-empt infection by 'priming' their immune systems, the fact that parasites learn to evade immune responses over time and the use of theory to predict when diseases will get out of hand. Many of the systems presented had clear impacts on human health, agriculture or the maintenance of complex ecosystems. There was common ground throughout in developing methodologies and embracing what one of the organizers termed the 'interactome' between hosts and those which would exploit them.