It was held between October 2 and 6. It has included daily practical sessions in which students have been able to work side by side with recognized experts in this field.
The places in the first CEAB-CSIC course on polychaete taxonomy have been limited in order to be able to individually supervise each student. Doctoral students, researchers and technicians from universities and research centers from different parts of the state, as well as from northern Europe, have participated.
It has been taught by renowned specialists in the field: Maria Capa, from the University of the Balearic Islands, and Daniel Martin, from CEAB-CSIC, (the course coordinators),with Guillermo San Martín from the Autonomous University of Madrid, and Maël Gose from the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo.
Each day of training has consisted of a theoretical part and a practical part in the CEAB laboratories, in which the students have worked side by side with the teachers.
It has been possible to learn the key characteristics of several Polychaeta families, as as well as knowing the different methodologies and techniques of identification, description and cataloguing, such as the latest digital imaging tools.
The course highlighted the importance of using transversal approaches, which combine traditional techniques (based on the observation of morphology) and the most cutting-edge techniques, such as molecular ones. In this way, the classification of organisms can be refined as much as possible. The relevance of the discipline, taxonomy, has also been highlighted as an essential first step in any study that wants to delve deeper into the ecology of ecosystems.
The students who have participated have agreed in valuing the training as “very useful, because you can work with experts who share what they know, answer your questions and provide you with very valuable tools and resources.”
This was the first edition of the polychaete taxonomy course. The training is included in the offer of courses on taxonomy of aquatic organisms that began from the CEAB-CSIC last year and will continue next year with a second edition of the polychaetes course and the first on insects and crustaceans of sweet water.
