Happy New Year

... to all my readers out there. I wish you a healthy, exciting and prosperous year 2015!

This blog was on hiatus for my holidays. The more glad I was to discover that it is still read and my audience didn't disappear over the last two weeks. On the contrary, the last couple of posts are still in high demand.

The new year will bring the usual mixture of research and applied science with respect to DNA-based species identification, seasoned with news from informatics, genetics, ecology and evolution. As with every good blog the choice of topics is purely subjective but I welcome any suggestions and news you might have. 

I will keep going with my weekly column of new discoveries. If you happen to have published a new description yourself by all means send it to me. There are already a couple of people that send me new papers on a regular basis and I am happy to include those discoveries. 

If time permits more of of those regular columns will appear in the months to come. I really like to have a closer look at new software and analytical methods. There are also some of my works which might otherwise never see the light of day, fragments that are not going to end up in a manuscript anytime soon but are worth to be shared with the community. I am still trying to write my own papers and honor my commitments to others but there is always this dark matter in one's drawer that might spark an idea in somebody else's mind once they had a chance to see it. 

The latter brings me to my last point of this post. I just want to reiterate - this blog welcomes comments. The commenting function is monitored but the only reason for this is the increasing amount of spam I receive. It is my hope this year to start more dialog through this post especially leading up to the big conference this summer. After all, blogs live not only through readers but also flourish with comments and contributions.