Today Mari Elizabeth Engelstad, the MSc student of María, successfully defended her MSc Thesis, 'Determining Nature Types in Norway by Soil eDNA Metabarcoding'. So many congrats to a job well done!
News
Congrats to Nataly Canales for her recent interview in BBC News on the cinchona tree and its historical use in human health. Quinine can be extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree, and for centuries was the primary treatment for malaria. The cinchona tree, which is native to the Andes, is presently endangered. Nataly explains in her article the importance of protecting the cinchona tree and 'the pharmacy of the world that nurtures it' as an incredible resource for future drug discoveries.
Brecht has accepted a new position as a researcher and editor-in-chief of Plant Ecology and Evolution at Meise Botanic Garden in Belgium. While he will remain part of the Plant ID team, Marcella Rydmark will be taking over as the new Project Manager. We wish to thank Brecht for all the tremendous work he has done as the Project Manager of Plant ID, and are grateful he will continue to support us as he continues in his exciting new role!
We've all seen posts in the media about the use of anti-malaria drugs to treat COVID-19. As scientists, it is our duty to be critical about this and to communicate clearly with the public. In this article, Kim Walker, Cassandra Quave, and Nataly Canales warn against the use of quinine or cinchona bark as there is no evidence to date that they exhibit activity against COVID-19.
On International Women's Day, we acknowledge the hard work and commitment of all women in our Plant.ID network.
Hugo, Panos, Bastien, and Brecht were invited to the University of Ioannina where Hugo and Panos gave presentations and talked about DNA barcoding and metabarcoding as tools to trace illegal trade of medicinal plants and orchids.
This new publication presents a dated megaphylogeny of the angiosperms, consisting of more than 36,000 species. It was (partly) funded by Plant.ID and involved 5 Plant.ID people from 3 different Plant.ID institutes and even a member of our supervisory board.
María went to Tromsø for her first scientific secondment and visited Prof. Inger Greve Alsos at the Tromsø University Museum. The darkness and cold proved challenging but it was a success! (pictures)
Life in academia is not always doom and gloom. Some highlights are participating in conferences and going on fieldwork. Yannick and Anne-Sophie did just that last summer and they write about it in their blog post.
Maurizio presented his research on illegal logging of some important timber species at the 5th Annual Meeting on Plant Ecology and Evolution held at Meise Botanic Garden.
Ntwai visited Ramotshere High School in Dinokana, North-West Province, his former high school in South Africa. He talked to 11th grade students about choosing courses at university, career planning, and life beyond the classroom. As a bona fide motivational coach, he encouraged them to do well during exams and life in general. (pictures)
Anne-Sophie was awarded the prize for the best conference talk during the Systematic Days organised by the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre. Congratulations!
Physilia had the opportunity to write about her research on reconstructing the diet of Capercaillies using metagenomics. You can read the article online at the iBOL Barcode Bulletin but you can also download the pdf here.
Wonderful news! The first Plant.ID publication appeared online today. Congratulations to Nataly and her supervisory team!
Also Mehrdad is participating in the Biodiversity_Next conference. His talk was about ebony wood identification to battle illegal trade.
The Biodiversity_Next conference is in full swing and Plant.ID is participating as well! Marcel presented his work on automated pollen species image identification. We heard the room was packed!
Nataly visited the Royal Botanic Garden Madrid in order to understand the history of the important collection of cinchona barks collected by Ruíz and Pavón in the 1780's, which is now split between Madrid and Kew. She was able to compare the two sets, transcribe and photograph the annotations, consult the curatorial expertise, and use the catalog, archives, and books.
All good things come to an end. Thank you to all Plant.ID partners for the excellent meeting! We listened to 15 great presentations and we had stimulating discussions. We can be very proud of our network!
We finally see each other again! Our venue is no castle this time but the lovely Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In the days ahead, our ESRs will present their progress and we hope to have some inspiring discussions.
Enjoy this little video about the iBOL2019 conference!
This morning, Théo and Margret paid a visit to the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment. They presented the results of their work on the global trade in orchids based on CITES data.
