3rd annual meeting del proyecto IMPRESS

Durante el 29 y 30 de enero hemos celebrado en el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de París el 3^rd annual meeting de la European Training Network IMPRESS.

A lo largo de la reunión hemos repasado el estado de los trabajos llevados a cabo por los 15 estudiantes predoctorales que realizan sus Tesis Doctorales en el marco del proyecto. 

También se ha discutido la organización de próximas actividades de difusión para público en general, como la celebración del Día Mundial de los Peces Migradores el próximo 21 de abril.

Asimismo, se discutieron detalles sobre la organización de la conferencia final del proyecto, titulada: Sustaining iconic diadromous fishes: The potential and pitfalls of cultivation, que se llevará a cabo del 17 al 20 de junio en Arendal (Noruega), www.nmbu.no/go/impress2018.

En la foto, con Carina Caldeira, una de las representantes de los doctorandos en la reunión, en el Campus de la Universidad Pierre et Marie Curie, que tuvimos ocasión de visitar brevemente.

Final IMPRESS Conference

Sustaining iconic diadromous fishes: The potential and pitfalls of cultivation.

June 17-20^th, 2018. Arendal (Norway). www.nmbu.no/go/impress2018

The aim of the conference is to bring together scientists and various stakeholders to discuss the costs and benefits of cultivation for stocking purposes of wild salmon, eel and sturgeon, and how to improve the quality of future cultivation programs. Particular focus will be given to three iconic diadromous fish species; eel, salmon, and sturgeon, with the additional aim to gather professionals across these species, to exchange perspectives and lessons learned. The conference is multidisciplinary and welcome applied and basic contributions from biological sciences, ecology, and social sciences as well as from practitioners. There will be a mix of invited speakers and oral sessions based on abstract submissions.

12 scholarships are available for the BIODIV PhD Programme

Call 2017-18

The Doctoral Programme in Biodiversity, Genetics and Evolution (BIODIV), invites applications for 12 scholarships for the 2017-18 academic year.

Funded by FCT – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, BIODIV is organized by the two largest Portuguese universities - University of Porto and the University of Lisbon - in partnership with CIBIO-InBIO (Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources/ Associate Laboratory) and cE3c (Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes).

The PhD Programme offers a variety of specialization options and the opportunity to work with leading scientists in an interdisciplinary research environment.

The call for applications is open between the 29 December 2017 and 20 January, 2018.

Information about the programme and on ‘How to apply’ is available at BIODIV’s website.

Nuestro último (vídeo)-artículo, aceptado en el Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE)

Handling and treatment of male European eels (Anguilla anguilla) for hormonal maturation and sperm cryopreservation

J.G. Herranz-Jusdado, E. Kása, T. Kollár, V. Gallego, D.S. Peñaranda, C. Rozenfeld, L. Pérez, Á. Horváth, J.F. Asturiano

During the last years, several research groups have been working on the development and improvement of new protocols for the European eel handling and maturation. As of yet, weekly injections of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) have proved to maturate males after just 5-6 weeks of treatment, producing high volumes of high-quality sperm during several weeks. In addition, sperm cryopreservation protocols using different extenders, cryoprotectants and cooling and thawing times have been previously described for European eel. Here, we show that Tanaka´s extender solution can be directly used for fertilization or for cryopreservation, making unnecessary the usage of different types of solutions and dilutions. Furthermore, the use of methanol as a cryoprotectant makes this protocol easy to use as methanol has low toxicity and does not activate the sperm. The sperm does not need to be cryopreserved immediately after the addition of the cryoprotectant, and it can be used long after being thawed. Moreover, sperm motility is still high after thawing although it is lower than that of fresh sperm. The aim of this work is to show the best available protocol for European eel handling, maturation, and sperm cryopreservation.