João Meira was present at the Trend in Biodiversity and Evolution (TIBE) congress, this year with focus on the Ecology and Conservation in the Afrotropics and held in Vila do Conde, Portugal.

João presented a poster resuming is master project on Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau's fish barcode reference libraries and eastern Atlantic biogeography patterns, developed in the scope of FISH-DNA-MONITOR

Filipe Tobana Nhanquê, a marine biologist from Guinea-Bissau, was awarded a FCT funded PhD whose project will be developed under the umbrella of FISH-DNA-MONITOR. His project entitled : "Exploratory study on the application of DNA tools to enhance the efficacy of monitorization and management of marine resources from Guine-Bissau"; alines clearly with one the main goals of the project : capacity building of the marine sector of Guinea-Bissau; and it's a testimony of the power of scientific projects to generate opportunities of higher education to bright and ambitious students

Filipe Costa participated with a presentation on the OBON Network Spotlight Episode 4 - Societal Applications. Citizen Science and Outreach.

You can see the entire seminar on the left and follow this series of seminars on the OBON youtube page. 

The 9th International Barcode of Life Conference was realised in Belem do Para, at the gates of Amazonia. In this special reunion, five years after IBOL 8, the FISH-DNA-MONITOR project contributed with one talk in the session : "Contribution of marine (e)DNA (meta)barcoding to the goals of the UN Ocean Decade" 

The Issue 6 of the OBON - Ocean Biomolecular Observing Network; Newsletter is available here . There you can find a report on the the progress of the FISH-DNA-MONITOR project.

Check out also the updates from his wonderful research community

From 29 to August 2 was organized in the Technical University of the Atlantic (UTA) in Mindelo, Cape Verde a scientific workshop with the theme of advancing molecular tools for monitoring fishery resources. This scientific reunion was organized in the scope of the A-FISH-DNA-SCAN project - a collaborative effort between Portugal, Cape Verde, and Brazil to implement molecular approaches for monitoring fish and ichthyoplankton, serving as a model for fisheries management in the Atlantic region.

Researchers from various esteemed institutions participated in the workshop, including the Centre for Molecular and Environmental Biology (CBMA) at the University of Minho, which coordinates the project. Other participating institutions were the Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), the Centre for Marine Sciences (CCMAR), the Centre for Neuroscience and Cell Biology (CNC), the Institute of Biosciences (IB) at São Paulo State University in Brazil, the Institute of Engineering and Marine Sciences (ISECMAR) at the Technical University of the Atlantic (UTA), and the Institute of the Sea (IMAR).

FISH-DNA-MONITOR team contributed to this reunion with one oral presentation by Luis Machado, and the participation on one round table by Filipe Nhanque in represenation of INIPO/Ministery of Fisheries of Guine-Bissau.

FISH-DNA-MONITOR was represented at the The Fisheries Society of the British Isles Annual Symposium (https://fsbi.org.uk/symposium-2024/), that this year was held in Bilbao from 15 to 19 July 2024. This is one of the most important global conferences on fish biology, conservation and fisheries management. This year the focus of the symposium was on "Advancing Fish Ecology, Management and Forecasting Through Omics".

Luis Machado presented a poster entitiled : Fish-DNA-Monitor: Supporting management of fisheries recources in Guine-Bissau through (e)DNA metabarcoding.

Great week with exciting scientific discussion!

From 18 to 29 June, ME-Barcoders's Filipe Costa and Luís Machado were on a mission to Guinea-Bissau, as part of the Fish-DNA-Monitor project, which has the main objective of developing the management capacity of Guinea-Bissau's fisheries resources through the use of state-of-the-art DNA-based techniques. This mission was organized in partnership with the National Institute for Fisheries and Oceanography Research of Guinea-Bissau (INIPO-Ministry of Fisheries), a partner in the project.

As part of this mission, on 19 June a workshop was organized at the facilities of the Institute of Biodiversity and Protected Areas of Guinea-Bissau (IBAP), which included a plenary lecture by Prof. Filipe Costa on DNA Barcoding as a tool for inventorying, monitoring and protecting biodiversity, as well as sessions on the progress of the project and INIPO's activities, and a final round table discussion.

The following days were marked by training sessions at the facilities of the Ministry of Fisheries of Guinea-Bissau, where there was an opportunity to meet with the Minister of Fisheries, Dr. Mário Musante, to discuss this Portuguese-Guinean collaboration. There was also an opportunity to meet with the director of Camões - Portuguese Cultural Center in Bissau, Dr. António Nunes, where the project's aspect as a driver for training Guinean staff for a sustainable blue economy was detailed, and in which the active role of the University of Minho as a partner higher education institution of Guinea-Bissau was highlighted.

In the second week of the mission, practical training activities were carried out as part of the project's tasks, including: collecting fish tissue from the Bandim market for future DNA analysis; collecting samples from the port of Bissau for analysis of invasive species; activity in the Cacheu River estuary, with the collection of zooplankton and additional fish tissue.

This scientific mission fulfilled all its objectives and lays the foundations for the maintenance of this collaboration in the long term.

During the months of November and December, the oceanographic vessel "Miguel Oliver"  (Spanish General Fisheries Secretary) will be along the Guinea-Bissau coast supporting multiple scientific teams. One of them will include members of Fish-DNA-Monitor team, that will collect tissues from multiples fish species, ichthyoplankton and Environmental DNA. In the first week of November we went to Vigo, where Miguel Oliver was docked, and delivered all material and reagents for the collection procedures. Best luck to all crew members!

A poster with preliminary results from Fish-DNA-Monitor was presented at the IV International Meeting of The Portuguese Society Of Genetics, that was held between the 19 and 20 of October of 2023 at University of Minho.

In the photo is our master student João Meira, that presented is project : Fish Monitoring and Biodiversity Assessment in the Atlantic : Building DNA-Barcode Reference Libraries for Cabo Verde and Guine-Bissau. 

Well Done, João!

The issue 3 - August 2023 from the OBON newsletter has a mention to the FISH-DNA-MONITOR, in particular it's 1st Workshop held on the 27 and 28  June 2023 at Minho University. Check this and other meaningful updates from this network here 

On the 7th of July, Fish-DNA-Monitor's Principal Investigator Filipe O. Costa give a presentation at the Encontro Nacional de Ciência (Aveiro) on the subject of Marine Biodiversity Monitoring and Management, in which he lectured about the the potential and usefulness of genetic based methodologies such as Barcoding, Metabarcoding and Environmental DNA.

On the 27th and 28th of June at University of Minho (Braga), the 1st Workshop in the framework of FISH-DNA-MONITOR, a project funded by the Aga Khan Development Network and FCT, that aims to assist Guinea-Bissau in the monitoring and management of their fisheries resources through the implementation of cutting-edge DNA based methodologies, was realised. In this meeting with all project team members, the Instituto Nacional de Investigação de Pesca e Oceanografia (INIPO, Guinea-Bissau) and the Instituto Español de Oceanografia (IEO), by Dr Iça Barri and Dr Ignacio Sobrino, were represented. Moreover, in line with one the main tasks of the project; training of Guinea-Bissau staff; a technician from INIPO spent the following week in the ME-Barcode laboratory at UMinho, practicing DNA extraction protocols related to metabarcoding of zooplankton and eDNA.  

João T. Fontes's communication "Updated phylogeography of the widely distributed John Dory (Zeus faber, Actinopterygii: Zeiformes) reaffirms the prevalence of at least two deeply divergent evolutionary lineages", supported by the Fish-DNA-Monitor project, earned an Honorable Mention at the XVIII National Meeting of Evolutionary Biology (Braga, December 2022). Congrats!