The first community meeting of the year happened on 26 January.
For a start, we received some updates from the Working Group leads.
Then, Pablo Orozco (Leibniz-Institut DSMZ) walked us through the newly entered-into-force Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ). While the BBNJ Treaty covers a wide range of issues, Pablo focused his presentation on Marine Genetic Resources (MGRs).
Then, Samuel Vanden Abele (Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences) presented Bop.Co, a species identification unit jointly run by the Institute of Natural Sciences and the Africa Museum. Bop.Co specialises in the identification of policy-relevant organisms and their derived products, using DNA analysis tools and expert taxonomic knowledge – a great example of DNA barcoding applications.
The last presentation was about the BGE paper “Empowering national capacity for DNA-based approach to species identification and biodiversity monitoring” by authors Elizavet Kaitetzidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Michał Grabowski (University of Łódź). The paper preprint is available here.
The Community Meetings are free to join for all iBOL Europe members. You can join our community here – that’s also free!
| Photo by Jörg Braukmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. |
