Lisa Ledger successfully defended her MSc thesis yesterday. Great job, Lisa.

One more project completed using samples from our long-term field sites in ACG, Costa Rica.

Best wishes to Lisa in her future plans.

Glad to see our paper Next-generation DNA barcoding: using next-generation sequencing to enhance and accelerate DNA barcode capture from single specimens among the top downloaded papers in Evolutionary Biology of Wiley journals. This paper was published in Molecular Ecology Resources and has been the most downloaded article in this journal in 2014.

Here is the link to Wiley’s announcement page. And the link to our paper.

The Environment Canada Canadian Aquatic Biomonitoring Network (CABIN) Team and the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, co-hosted the 3^nd biennial CABIN Science Forum on December 2-3, 2014 in Guelph, Ontario. Previous science forums were held in Vancouver, BC in 2010 and Fredericton, NB in 2012. The 2-day forum (agenda) included themed sessions with short presentations by CABIN partners, followed by discussion periods. The forum also included tours of the facilities of the University of Guelph’s Biodiversity Institute and Centre for Biodiversity Genomics. One of the main themes was “Biomonitoring 2.0: Genomics and its application in Biomonitoring”. In total, over 70 attendees from industry, government, and academia were in attendance with nearly 100 more participating via web conference.

Plenary speakers from Canada, USA, and China came to present some of their recent genomic biomonitoring research and participate in the discussion, including:

• Xiaowei Zhang; Nanjing University; “Environmental Genomics Reveal Environmental Threshold of Ammonia for the Protection of Zooplankton in Freshwater Ecosystem”
• Eric Stein; Southern California Coastal Water Research Project; “Application of eDNA and Metabarcoding to Routine Stream and Wetland Biomonitoring Programs in California”
• Erik Pilgrim; US EPA; “Expanding Bioassessment into Understudied or Novel Communities through DNA Metabarcoding”
• Joel Gibson; University of Guelph; “Assessing Boreal Aquatic Ecosystems using DNA Metasystematics and Next-generation Sequencing”
• Shadi Shokralla; University of Guelph; “Biomonitoring 2.0: a New Implementation of Next-generation Sequencing Technologies for Environmental DNA Research and Ecosystem Assessment”

The discussion of genomics and biomonitoring gets lively.

Bio2 team member, Shadi Shokralla, leads forum attendees through a tour of the University of Guelph lab facilities.

Mehrdad Hajibabaei and Ian King gave talks at the 2014 Latornell Conservation Symposium on Wednesday, Nov. 19th. They were part of the session “What’s in Your Water? Ecological Applications of eDNA for Species Detection and Monitoring”.

Dr. Mehrdad Hajibabaei

Mehrdad Hajibabaei: “Biodiversity Analysis through Environmental DNA: From Microbes to Mammals”

 Ian King: “Using environmental DNA (eDNA) for monitoring Jefferson Salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum) and the Ambystoma species complex in southern Ontario”