A short stay in beautiful Italy

This month, July 2019, Joana Veríssimo went to Maggiore, Lugano, and Varese lakes in northern Italy for the initial optimization tests to detect the invasive zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) through eDNA water sampling.

Fieldwork was done with the help of Manuel Lima (CIBIO), Dr Nicoletta Riccardi (CNR – Institute for Ecosystems Studies, Italy) and Dr Maria Urbańska (Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poland). The same protocol will be tested soon in Portugal in an attempt to early detect any invasion of the zebra mussel in Portuguese waterbodies.

Landscapes are fantastic, but the short stay and heavy schedule did not allow much time for any sightseeing…