On an invitation from the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, Zhu Zengrong, professor from the Institute of Insect Sciences, together with PhD student Wang Xueqin, attended the 6th International Barcode of Life Conference, in University of Guelph, Canada, from August 17th to 21st.
The theme of the meeting, Barcodes to Biomes, signals the ongoing expansion of the community’s research agenda from studies on particular sets of species in particular places to work which is creating the capability to examine entire biotic assembles at local and global scales. This conference provided the best opportunity to discuss advances in biodiversity research and develop new programs for biodiversity researches through DNA barcoding/ biodiversity genomics.
There were more than 600 attendees from 5 continents participated the Conference. Pre-Conference Workshops, held in Aug. 17th, mainly introduced the function of the BOLD (Barcode of Life Data, http://www.boldsystems.org) system and the next generation sequencing. There were the plenary sessions in the morning and the parallel sessions in the afternoon during the 4 days from 18th to 21st Aug. Eight topics, including biodiversity & ecosystem, eco-evolutionary dynamics, ecological interactions, ecological & environmental genomics, bioinformatics, taxonomy & systematic, conservation, global initiatives were held. PhD student Wang Xue-Qin, from Institute of Insect Sciences, Zhejiang University, delivered a presentation titled “Using barcoding to analyze interactions among preys and generalist predators in rice ecosystems”.
Prof. Zhu and Prof. Paul Hebert
Ms Wang Xueqin, the 3rd from right, other five oral presenters and Dr. Robert Hanner , the chairman of the session “ Biosurveillance ” in the afternoon of 18th Aug.