Bremen International Graduate School for Marine Sciences

Anna Fricke took part in an international Marine Science Network-sponsored workshop on Tropical Field Phycology.

From July 9th-23rd, 2008, I took part in an international Marine Science Network-sponsored workshop on Tropical Field Phycology. Together with 12 other graduate and undergraduate students from all over the world (Columbia, Costa rica, El Salvador, Germany, France and the US) the course was held in the Smithsonian Field station in Bocas del Toro, Panama, under the supervision of Drs. Brian Wysor (Roger Williams University), Wilson Freshwater (University of North Carolina at Wilmington) and Suzanne Fredericq (University of Louisiana at Lafayette).
The course program included lectures, discussions and training of the current taxonomy of marine macroalgae, as well as applications of molecular tools to pertinent questions in systematics. Instructors and students collected multiple samples of over 200 algae species by Scuba diving, snorkeling and intertidal surveys. Herbarium speciements were created to document the macroalgal taxa collected and identified. Many of these samples were used by the students to create a guide of common seaweeds of the Bocas del Toro region.

Furthermore the sampled and identified material became part of the Bocas Barcode Initiative, which is the ongoing effort to develop a DNA barcode reference database of the fauna and flora of Bocas del Toro, in collaboration with Drs. Amy Driskell of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.
During the course new contacts and networks between the different researchers were established.

Thanks to GLOMAR I was able to get the chance in taking part in this course.