The South African Society for Systematic Biologists Conference 2025 was held at FABI at the University of Pretoria from 11-13 September.  The conference, organised by the President of the SASSB (and FABI Deputy Director) Prof. Fanus Venter, with the theme “Systematics for all: Where taxonomy meets technology” was attended by 44 delegates from nine universities, as well as from the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), Agricultural Research Council (ARC) and KwaZulu-Natal Museum. The keynote speaker was Prof. Pedro Crous of the Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute who gave an overview of the genus Fusarium in his talk “Fusarium: The NeverEnding story”.  The conference programme was packed with numerous other presentations covering all aspects of systematics

The Conference also included a Phylogenomics workshop presented by FABIan Prof. Martin Coetzee from the University of Pretoria’s Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology (BGM) and Dr Seth Musker from the University of Cape Town.

This is the 17^th SASSB conference since the Society’s establishment in 1999 to address the concern of declining capacity and resources for systematics in South Africa (and globally). The broad aim of the society is to promote and represent the activities and interests of all biological systematists, evolutionary biologists, natural history curators and collection managers in South Africa by inspiring an appreciation for systematics and natural history collections.