‘Genomic tools for conservation: a practitioner’s* guide’

Overview

This Training School will be mainly, but not exclusively oriented towards practitioners, with the aim of presenting, in the simplest and yet most comprehensive manner, the contribution that can be provided by genetics and genomics for effectively tackling practical conservation and management problems. The underlying rationale for the School is to create a bidirectional information flow between scientists and practitioners to explore and clarify where and when genomics can make a difference in every day conservation within an EU policy and legislative framework, but with global application. To this end, trainees will be asked to offer at the beginning a short presentation about the main conservation challenges of their current jobs where they think genetic tools might help. At the end of the School, we will revisit these presentations, discussing the options and potential strategies that can be applied using the genomic and analytical tools described during the School. We hope to enable those involved to go back to their respective positions armed with a plan that they can then put into practice! This School may also be relevant to graduate students about to embark on conservation genomics projects to help them develop workplans, and just as important, to allow them to make their work policy and management oriented from the outset.

List of confirmed trainers (as of October30, 2019)

Mike Bruford (University of Cardiff, UK)

Gernot Segelbacher University of Freiburg, Germany)

Josie Jackson, (University of Cardiff, UK)

Noel Vella (University of Malta, Malta)

Adriana Vella (University of Malta, Malta)

Margarida Fernandes (Institute of Conservation of Nature and Forests, Portugal)

Per Sjogren-Gulve (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Sweden)

Cristiano Vernesi (Fondazione Edmund Mach, Italy)

Sean Hoban (Morton Arboretum, USA)

Paul Hohenlohe (University of Idaho, USA)

Myriam Heuertz (INRA, France)

Linda Laikre (Stockholm University, Sweden)

Local organizers

Adriana Vella

Noel Vella

Final program