The Geometridae are a large family of moths (~23000 species). Their name is derived from the Ancient Greek geo for the earth, and metron for measure, which makes it earth-measurer. This refers to the looping fashion in which their larvae move. In English they are also called inchworm for the very same reason. Stamnodes fergusoni was found in Texas and named after the late Douglas C. Ferguson, renewed expert for geometrid moths of North America.…

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After a longer hiatus I am using the COVID-19 induced home isolation for a new attempt at this  blog that highlights new species that share this planet with us. They all have little stories to tell. My goal is only to quickly introduce them to a larger public. Enjoy!Litter frogs (Family Megophryidae) are live in South East Asia. They are mostly famous for their elaborate camouflage which makes many of them look like dead leaves.…

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Dear fellow barcoders,we plan to extend our ongoing barcoding efforts in the Caucasus region by a new project, CaBOL. We submitted the CaBOL proposal a while ago and recently received very positive signals from the funder, although not yet the official grant notification.In order to be ready to start the project soon after COVID loosens its grip, I would like to circulate the job offer for a CaBOL project coordinator (based at ZFMK, Bonn, Germany,…

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Over the past decade and a half our Natural History collection here at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics continuously grew and today our media team publicly announced that we surpassed the 5 Million Specimen mark. Mind you all of those are digitized (and barcoded).Here the official press release:February 2020 marks an important milestone for the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG) at the University of Guelph. CBG’s in-house natural history collection (CBG Collections) has reached five…

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In case you did not come across the new version of the BIOSCAN video - really worth watching!BIOSCAN is iBOL's new seven-year, $180 million global research program that aims to revolutionize our understanding of biodiversity and our capacity to manage it. Involving scientists, research organizations, and citizens, BIOSCAN will explore three major research themes: Species Discovery, Species Interactions, Species Dynamics.iBOL (International Barcode of Life Consortium) involves researchers in 30+ nations who share a mission to…

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A position to work at McGill partly in collaboration with our lab:Preferred Disciplines: Biology, Bioinformatics (Postdoc position)Project length: 2 years, renewable for 3rd year Approx. start date: February 15, 2020Location: McGill University, Montreal, QCSummary of Project:The Postdoctoral Fellow will be involved in long-term and highly replicated laboratory and field experiments on the effect of multiple stressors on the structure and function of aquatic communities. The research will involve developing and implementing bioinformatic tools for analysing metabarcoding, metagenomics and transcriptomics data sets…

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A Postdoctoral Research fellow position in museomics/ancient DNA analyses is available at the Natural History Museum (NHM), University of Oslo, Norway. The position is part of the research group ‘Frontiers in Evolutionary Zoology (FEZ)‘. The appointment is a full time position and is made for a period of up to four years (25 % of which is devoted to required duties) with a starting date no later than 31.08.2020.The complete text of the job announcement…

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Some shameless self-promotion. I am teaching my online metabarcoding introduction course again:January 20, 2020 to February 16, 2020Four weeks learning covering the basics:High-troughput sequencingEnvironmental DNA (eDNA)Metabarcoding analyticsApplications/Recent research

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Understanding the trophic structure of a community is indispensable to understanding the underlying ecosystem in its entirety. Unfortunately, basic information on animal diet is often incomplete or simply missing. This is not a surprise as the assessment of animal diet is rather difficult. Very often direct observation of feeding is not possible. Species are elusive, small, rare or live in regions that are inaccessible. Another issue is variability of diets within species, populations or even…

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"That’s God’s signature. God’s signature is never a forgery."Eddie Joe Lloyd, quoted in the New York Times (26 August 2002). Lloyd had been sent to prison 17 years before and was released in 2002 when DNA testing showed a mismatch between his DNA profile and the profile developed from evidence at the crime scene.The first DNA profiling techniques were developed in the mid-1980s. The technology was named DNA fingerprinting in reference to the well-established forensic…

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