by Xavier Turon
On
November the 12th, 2019, we held in Barcelona the third General
Assembly of the PopCOmics project. 16 people attended the meeting,
comprising most of the research teams at the University of Barcelona
and at the Centre for Advanced Studies at Blanes.
Marta
Pascual and Xavier Turon gave an overview of the mid-term report that
was presented to the Spanish Ministry in September. In short, all
tasks are already ongoing, some already finished, and some still in
the first phases. Several new species have been added to the initial
workplan.
We
were lucky in having already 21 papers with the direct results of the
project (and 18 more with related side results related), 3 invited
keynotes, 58 meeting presentations, 2 doctoral theses already
deposited, 3 Master Theses, and 3 Degree Theses presented. All this
speaks of excellent achievements at this stage of the project.
We
then had interesting presentations and discussions about the ongoing
research. Francesc Mestres gave a talk about the results of five
years of genetic monitoring of populations of Liocarcinus
depurator in the Atlanto-Mediterranean
transition. Oriol Sacristan introduced us to his studies on Cliona
sponge symbionts in his Marie Curie SCOOBA project. The doctoral
students of the project, Marta Turon, Adrià Antich, Anna Barbanti,
Hector Torrado, and Carles Galià updated us on their research.
Finally, Núria Marco presented results of her Master Thesis on
Didemnum vexillum
symbionts.
We concluded with an open round of discussion in
which aspects of the dissemination activities and plans for future
research projects were commented. We ended up chatting over beer and
lunch at the University’s cafeteria.
It
was an enjoyable and profitable day and we hope to repeat it next
year.