The Brazilian Federal Government has put their so called New Law on Biodiversity into effect and it seems it is a huge step backwards with severe implications for the Brazilian colleagues and biodiversity research overall.The key section of this new legislation that was met with some strong but healthy criticism is the fact that literally every bit of research activity done on Brazilian biodiversity must now be registered in the National System of Genetic Resource…

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Found this in my inbox yesterday and thought it couldn't hurt to spread the word further. Tomas Roslin wrote:Kadri Pärtel from the Univeristy of Tartu is asking for help from good ecologists travelling in the Arctic this summer.Kadri is keen to obtain samples and pictures of some ascomycetes growing gregariously on Diapensia lapponica dead leaves in summer (June, July, August). These fungi have semitranslucent-beige turbinate cup-like fruitbodies, 100-250 um in diam. Based on material collected in 1970-1980s…

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After some crazily busy weeks a quick weekend read blog post. Some really good papers have appeared in the last couple of weeks. Hard to make a selection.A MinION-based pipeline for fast and cost-effective DNA barcodingDNA barcodes are useful for species discovery and species identification, but obtaining barcodes currently requires a well-equipped molecular laboratory, is time-consuming, and/or expensive. We here address these issues by developing a barcoding pipeline for Oxford Nanopore MinION™ and demonstrate that…

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Dear friends and colleagues,We invite you to visit and bookmark the 8th International Barcode of Life Conference webpage. Please save the dates June 17-20, 2019 in your calendars.The scientific and social programs are under development, but we are confident that both will be memorable!Please distribute this invitation broadly in your network and stay tuned for updates.

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The Heineken Prizes are the most prestigious international science prizes of the Netherlands. They are awarded every other year. The laureates are selected by juries assembled by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and made up of leading Dutch and foreign scientists and scholars. The Heineken Prizes are named after Dr Henry P. Heineken (1886-1971); Dr Alfred H. Heineken (1923-2002) and Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken (1954), chairman of the Dr H.P. Heineken Foundation and the Alfred Heineken…

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Lots of work and distractions keep me from blogging these days. Hope to get back to old routine in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, some more papers to read:Performance of amplicon and shotgun sequencing for accurate biomass estimation in invertebrate community samplesNew applications of DNA and RNA sequencing are expanding the field of biodiversity discovery and ecological monitoring, yet questions remain regarding precision and efficiency. Due to primer bias, the ability of metabarcoding to accurately depict…

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Weakly electric fishes produce continuous wave-type electric organ discharges that are used for electrolocation and communication. Electrocommunication convergently evolved within the distantly related South American and African weakly electric fishes approximately 100 million years ago, enabling them to detect their environment and communicate with each other through the generation and sensation of electric signals. Most species use special muscle-derived electric organs to generate the necessary electric current. Members of the ghost knifefishes (family Apteronotidae)  have an…

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Biodiversity and nature's contributions to people sound, to many people, academic and far removed from our daily lives. Nothing could be further from the truth - they are the bedrock of our food, clean water and energy. They are at the heart not only of our survival, but of our cultures, identities and enjoyment of life. Sir Robert Watson, Chair of IPBESFour peer-reviewed assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) focus…

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Tenurable appointment - University of Western Australia - School of Biological SciencesThe School of Biological Sciences is a research-intensive school that prides itself in providing innovative, research-informed, teaching at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The School has internationally recognised expertise in Computational Biology, Ecology and Conservation, Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience and in Science Communication.The School also hosts the Centre for Evolutionary Biology and the WA Biogeochemistry Centre and has strong links with other Schools in the…

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More to read for you in case you follow my recommendations. As stated before I am posting only a selection and all papers are chosen at least in part based on subjective criteria. So, here we go, my take on what I think you (and especially my students) should read ;-)Using DNA metabarcoding for assessing chironomid diversity and community change in mosquito controlled temporary wetlandsThe biocide Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis (Bti) is widely applied for…

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