Symposium Announcement and Call for Presentation Abstracts
Rediscovering pelagic biodiversity: Progress, promise, and challenges of metabarcoding of microbes to mammals
Convenors: Ann Bucklin (University of Connecticut, USA) and
Bengt Karlson (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Sweden)
Sponsor: Scientific Committee for Ocean Research (SCOR); MetaZooGene Working Group (SCOR WG157)
Venue: Svenska Mässan, Swedish Exhibition & Congress Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden
Date: September 13, 2019
Novel approaches are transforming our understanding and appreciation for pelagic biodiversity and the significance for ocean ecosystem function. Metabarcoding (high-throughput DNA sequencing of barcode gene regions from environmental samples) is being widely used for analysis of diversity, distribution, and abundance of marine organisms from microbes to mammals. Metabarcoding allows improved detection of rare, cryptic and novel taxa, resulting in new global estimates of marine biodiversity and new understanding of the dynamics of marine food webs and ecosystems. There remain many technical and conceptual challenges for analysis and interpretation of metabarcoding results. Research is needed to evaluate and compare results from different marker gene regions and bioinformatics approaches, and for validation and ground-truthing of metabarcoding results. Progress is being made in the use of metabarcoding for quantification of taxon abundance or biomass, examination of trophic interactions and food-web dynamics, remote detection of marine organisms based on eDNA (environmental DNA), and applications for time-series monitoring and ecosystem assessment.
This symposium is associated with the UNESCO - Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)
and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) - 2019 Annual Science Conference
(September 9-12, 2019 in Gothenburg, Sweden, http://www.ices.dk/news-and-events/asc/asc2019/Pages/default.aspx )
For additional information:
Scientific Committee for Ocean Research https://scor-int.org/
MetaZooGene SCOR WG157 https://scor-int.org/group/157/ and http://www.metazoogene.org/
Global Harmful Algal Bloom Program - GlobalHAB http://www.globalhab.info
Please contact Ann Bucklin (ann.bucklin@uconn.edu) with questions and suggestions.
Presentation abstracts are requested by May 31, 2019.
To submit a presentation abstract, please complete the form found at the link below. In addition to presentation title, presenter name, and co-author information, this form will ask you to enter a 250-word (max) abstract for your proposed presentation.