48th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Pedro Beja, the ERA Chair Coordinator, has attended this month the 48th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The meeting took place at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria, from the 10-14 September, and was placed under the theme of “Ecology – meeting the scientific challenges of a complex world”.

He was invited to give a talk with the title “Barcoding and metabarcoding: exploring exciting new opportunities in ecology”. The conference provided the opportunity to present EnvMetaGen work and the overall interest of metagenomics as a tool to address multiple questions in ecology to an audience of scientists that operate in different fields, and that are interested in many different species.

During the meetings there were several discussions regarding the potential application of metabarcoding and related molecular tools to tackle ecological problems, and collaborations with CIBIO in this area were envisaged, in particular concerning Joana Paupério’s project AGRIVOLE. More news on this collaboration and results of the project soon!