From the inbox: NEAT

Just found this letter in my email inbox and thought it is worth to be shared:

Dear colleagues and friends, 

Most of you have already heard about this new academic network on arctic terrestrial/ freshwater arthropods, which we will from now on refer to as:

NEAT – NEtwork on Arthropods of the Tundra.

It has taken a while to get back to you all. One reason for this is that CBMP – the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program asked us to form the official network on invertebrates for the CBMP and I have been discussing this with colleagues for the past weeks.

While it makes sense for our network to contribute to such processes as the CBMP, I have decided to propose that we start out as an independent network and work towards our own goals of learning about each other’s study organisms, sites, methods and results with no formal obligations and expectations. This can obviously be changed at a later date.

With this e-mail I would like to ask you to provide input to a short survey, so we can add information to the web site we are about to construct.

We are also planning a newsletter to be sent out twice a year (probably in May and October). Tentatively, the newsletter will include information about field work and meetings taking place as well as a way to distribute job adverts etc. The newsletter would also be an outlet for requests for sample or data collection at multiple sites. Finally, we are considering highlighting recent findings in the research field.

We hope you will take an active role in the network and please send us any suggestions or ideas for ways to make the most of it.

Please pass on this e-mail to others who you think could be interested.

Best wishes to you all,

Toke T. Høye

on behalf of the steering group:

Derek Sikes, Chris Buddle, Terry Wheeler, Steve Coulson, Peter Convey, Tomas Roslin, Joe Bowden, Toke T. Høye

h/t Torbjørn Ekrem