Conference - Day 2

Day 2 at the International Conference for the Barcode of Life was a rather short one as the afternoon was free giving the participants a chance to explore the world outside the hotel and conference venue. A small group of us traveled to the so called Stone Forest which is worth another post I'll put up once I am back and had a chance to download my photos.

What was there to learn?

The plenaries of this day were under the title Implications for Biodiversity. A diverse set of talks which makes it hard to for me to summarize so I will just throw out some citations and ideas that I put down during the session. Of course they are taken out of context but I think they speak for themselves:

"Coldcode members are proud to say that we are a-political"

Bob Murphy (a Chinadian)

"A future research agenda for DNA Barcoding:

1.describe biodiversity patterns from site-base DNA sequencing (genomic observatories), long term ecosystem monitoring using barcodes

2.assess lineage specific and area specific rates of turnover for each ecoregion in the world"
Alfried Vogler

"We need no more keys. They are a waste of time"

Michael Balke

"Ultra-deep sequencing leads to ultra-deep frustration in protists with sometimes >80% unassigned OTUs"

Jan Pawlowski

"Mushroom poisoning is a big issue in China and DNA Barcoding can make a big contribution to local markets and save lives."

Zhu-Liang Yang

"Scientific naivety is unwarranted"

Gary Saunders

Needless to say that I want to make sure that everybody learns more about the talks than a few text bits that I picked entirely subjectively some of which because I thought they are very entertaining. If you want to read more you will have to follow this blog for the next couple of weeks.