POGO Visiting Professorship 2013

Course title: 

MoM-CPR : Molecular Mining of the Continuous Plankton Recorder and other archived datasets

Dates: 27 November-3 December 2013

Visiting Professor: Dr. Declan Schroeder, Marine Biological Association, United Kingdom

Host: Dr. Hans Verheye, Oceans Research, Department of Environmental Affairs, Cape Town, South Africa.

The week-long training programme was designed to give students training in order to disseminate and standardise research-based molecular protocols applied to existing environmental samples such as the South African Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR), whilst also introducing technologies developed elsewhere for other purposes (eg medical field). A methods manual was also developed, that would provide great practical value to both researchers and research users.

First of all, a public lecture was delivered by Dr Schroeder, entitled “The Virus, the Sea and the Honeybee Conundrum – Virus Ecology: implications for honeybee health and marine ecosystem function”. This was attended by over 70 people. This was followed by the training course itself, which was attended by 27 participants. The course comprised of a combination of taught and hands-on practical sessions that illustrated “best practice” in acquiring molecular data from archived marine samples. The training supported POGO’s objectives to share and advance expertise in the areas of fixed time point and large scale, operational biological observatories such as the CPR.

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