NEWSLETTER December 2019 Editorial At the inspiring iBOL congress In this issue: organized by Torbjørn Ekrem in by Agnès Bouchez Trondheim (Norway) last June more than 30 participants from · Editorial DNAqua-Net gathered, many of them presenting talks and posters · Announcements in the various sessions, including 5 young scientists funded with ITC · Working groups Conference Grants. It’s stimulating and great to see young scientists · General reports from ITCs taking a more and · STSMs more active roles in all DNAq- ua-Net related activities! · ITC grants The current Grant Period 4 constitutes the “integration phase”. It’s fascinating how DNAqua-Net It is characterized by a particular shift, with methods leaving the www.dnaqua.net has now reached its full maturity, resulting in so many outcomes. labs where they have been devel- About 50 short research ex- oped, and being tested in real life, changes (STSMs) already took involving more and more stake- place leading to fruitful and in- holders: teresting results with many papers New programs inspired by already published. During the DNAqua-Net have been launched, recent training schools in Bucha- testing the application of molecu- rest, Sweden and France more lar methods for biomonitoring at than 72 trainees from 25 countries a much larger scale: INTERREG participated to build capacities in programs (SYNAQUA, Eco-Alp- metabarcoding. The workshops sWater), SCANDNAnet, GeDNA, held during the last year addressed JDS4, Portugal WFD and more. different topics: High Performance International collaborations Computation and data storage beyond Europe are now well EU COST Action CA15219 (Lyon), sedimentary DNA (Rome), settled, especially with Xiaowei molecular tools to assess new bio- Zhang (Nanjing University, Chi- logical quality elements i.e. micro- na) as well as Eric Stein and Su- Contact organisms and meiofauna (Prague), sanna Theroux (SCCWRP, USA). Prof. Dr. Florian Leese Standardisation University of Duisburg-Essen groundwater biodiversity (Ljublja- : No imple- Aquatic Ecosystem Research na). Furthermore, we engaged with mentation without standards! A Universitaetsstr. 5, various national and international new working group dedicated to 45141 Essen, Germany stakeholders through meetings molecular approaches for moni- email: [email protected] in i.e. Porto and Vienna. This set toring of aquatic ecosystems came phone: +49.201.183.4053 of workshops and meetings has in force at CEN in 2019, led by continued recently in Cyprus with Kristian Meissner (CEN TC 230/ www.dnaqua.net our 5th Management Committee WG28). A task force from WG3 meeting. 1 NEWSLETTER December 2019 has launched a first preliminary • Hopefully, after a successful on implementation and stand- working item about eDNA sam- application, DNAqua-Net can ardisation of DNA approaches pling in water that is now being formally be extended for one in biomonitoring, e.g. on spring examined in this CEN group. more year to finalise specific biodiversity and others. Other preliminary working items impact tasks! Let’s benefit from the “particle are also being prepared and cur- • While many (trans)national accelerator” effect of DNAqua-Net rently ongoing (sediment sam- projects stimulated by DNAq- that relies on every member and let pling, quality control, phytoben- ua-Net are already productive, us together pursue our ideas! thos sampling and preservation…) new European proposals are on that will hopefully promote future the track: ITN ‘AQUAnOMICS’, Agnès Bouchez implementation. new COST Action ideas focusing (Vice-Chair of DNAqua-Net) Implementation: Both regula- tory stakeholders and private com- panies are beginning to envisage Announcements full use of these new DNA-based tools. In particular, the discussion MC6 meeting in Evian on the implementation in regula- Upcoming events 15 September 2020 tory biomonitoring during a recent WG 1: gap filling workshop in meeting with ECOSTAT in Vien- Bratislava (Feb 3 – 5, 2020) TDWG/GBIF, 23-25 September na looks very promising. 2020, Washington Efforts have to be continued to- COST Mobilise Conference Feb- wards implementation, that is why ruary 2020, Poland our last Grant Period, the “contin- WG 5: stakeholder workshop in uation phase”, will have a strong Paris (March 10, 2020), France. focus on this objective. We now Attached to ECOSTAT Meeting have to consider the sustainability of our efforts beyond the current CETAF 2020 + Belgian empow- funding period of DNAqua-Net, ering biodiversity, May 2020 and definitely, there are many ideas Belgium and possibilities: Society for the Preservation of • A new international scientific Natural History Collections, meeting under the brand of June 2020, Scotland “DNAqua-Net” will have its first 1st DNAqua-Net International venue 15 to 18 September 2020 Conference (September 16-18, in Evian (France), and will be 2020), France proposed to the international th scientific community every two 4 Central European Symposium years! for Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Research – CESAMIR2020, • The journal we launched, which will be held on July 5-10, MBMG (https://mbmg.pensoft. 2020 in Slovakia: https://www. net), is continuing his route with aquabol.sk/cesamir2020/ more and more great papers, waiting for yours to follow! 2 NEWSLETTER December 2019 New Projects and UTAD, and by the Europe- Life-DNAquatic: https://bit.ly/2t- an project EnvMetaGen as well jvbyz Bosnia-Herzegovina: national as EDP Biodiversity Chair to ePIKE: https://bit.ly/2rWS1M5 Ministry of Civil Affairs decided CIBIO-InBIO. to support the project proposal eDNA – promises and challenges: Sweden titled “A pilot project on DNA : The Swedish Environ- https://bit.ly/2Pv84tA (in swedish) metabarcoding and morpho- mental Protection Agency and logical identification of benthic the Swedish Agency for Marine Reports diatoms on the travertine barriers and Water Management have of the River Una”. This is a direct approved this year eight research Workshops and output of the STSM of Jasmina projects to facilitate the devel- Training Schools Kamberovic and was prepared opment of DNA-methods in by Belma Kalmujic-Sroil, Agnès environmental monitoring (2019- WG2: Microorganisms & Bouchez and others. 2021). Four of these projects have been done in collaboration with Meiofauna Meeting Portugal: In Portugal, research- with DNAqua-Net: “Barcoding (Czech Republic) ers are collaborating with the of freshwater taxa for improved Portuguese Environment Agency assessment of biodiversity The workshop on microorganisms (APA) to evaluate the applica- (FRESHBAR)” (Maria Kahl- and meiofauna was organized in tion of molecular methods in ert, SLU), “Life-DNAquatic” Czech Republic on November 19 the ecological monitoring of (Micaela Hellström, AquaBiota and 20, 2018. freshwaters under the Water Water Research), “ePIKE - Test- The workshop consisted of two Framework Directive (WFD). ing the applicability of eDNA parts, one on prokaryotes (led The work involves more than for monitoring pike (Esox lucius by Marketa Mareckova) and on 150 macroinvertebrate samples L) abundance” Anti Vasemägi, meiofauna (led by Ursula Eisend- collected in Central and North- SLU, “eDNA – promises and le-Flöckner). The goal was to sum- ern Portugal (2018 and 2019) challenges (Per Sundberg, Goth- marize possibilities for including by researchers from the Univer- enburg University)”. Find more microorganisms in routine water sity of Coimbra (UC) and the information on the projects’ quality monitoring and to use the University of Trás-os-Montes webpages: https://bit.ly/35xCUaK outcome to calculate the respective and Alto Douro (UTAD), which (in Swedish only). indices. will be identified using mor- The results of the workshop are Germany phological approaches by UC : The German Federal currently being summarized by and UTAD, and using DNA Environmental Agency funded a drafting a paper that is expected metabarcoding by the research 3.5-year project to scrutinize the to be submitted by the end of this center CIBIO-InBIO. The first power of DNA-metabarcoding year to Science of the Total Envi- results will be available in early for Water Framework Directive ronment. 2020. This project greatly bene- compliant Stream Ecosystem The introduction to the meet- fited from DNAqua-net, which Assessment. Grant recipients: ing was provided by Karel Simek, created the momentum to devel- Florian Leese & Daniel Hering who talked about the microbial op these studies and contributed (University of Duisburg-Essen) interactions in a water column with inputs for study design and Further Projects observed by fluorescence in situ methodological developments. hybridization techniques. Each of Financial support for this work FRESHBAR: https://bit.ly/2sxirnI the participants had a short pres- has been provided by APA to UC entation about his/her perspective 3 NEWSLETTER December 2019 and results on this matter and later barcodes). Its use for freshwater species detection and quantifica- a discussion and conclusions were biomonitoring is particularly inter- tion. made. The talk also focused on esting in the context of the Water • Detail the principal bioinformat- the molecular and bioinformatic Framework Directive (WFD), ics steps applied on metabarcod- tools, selection of most appropriate where thousands of aquatic ecosys- ing data in order to obtain molec- approaches for data collection and tems are monitored annually across ular taxonomic inventories (with analyses with regard to the use of Europe. As part of this assessment, practical exercises on “Mothur” these data in routine