An exciting conference in Uppsala, Sweden

Three members of our team have just returned from the 3rd Symposium on Ecological Networks and 3rd Symposium on Molecular Analysis of Trophic Interactions that took place in September 11th-15th, 2017 in Uppsala, Sweden. It was a great opportunity for networking with researchers in the area of Molecular Ecology, and to present the work being developed under several research lines of the EnvMetaGen project.

Vanessa Mata gave a talk entitled “How much is enough? Estimating individual bat diet using metabarcoding” and presented the poster entitled “Metabarcoding in passerine diet analyses: efforts, biases and results”; while Sasha Vasconcelos presented the poster entitled “Linking agricultural management, host-parasitoid interactions and natural pest control in Mediterranean olive farms: a molecular-based food web approach”. Finally, Bastian Egeter gave a talk entitled “Prey DNA Detectability Half-Lives: Turning PCR Positives into Quantitative Predation Rates”.

All of these were very well received and sparked extensive follow up discussion during the course of the conference. The representation of EnvMetaGen by multiple team members ensured that a high level of awareness of the project was raised. As an important outcome of the meeting, a Special Issue for Molecular Ecology will be produced with the provisional title “Species interactions, ecological networks and community dynamics”. Vanessa and Bastian have submitted tentative abstracts for this Special Issue.