Plant Ecology Lab is visited by Zuzana Sỳkorová from the Institute of Botany of the Academy of
Sciences of the Czech Republic, Pruhonice. On Friday, 03.06, at 10.15 Zuzana will give a seminar "Using the mitochondrial large subunit rDNA markers for a long-term tracing of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal isolates inoculated in the field and for their coexistence/competition studies under greenhouse conditions" at Lai 40-218 (Tartu). During her visit, Zuzana and several members of our Lab will participate in a course of PlutoF - a Web Based Workbench for the Annotating INSDC (NCBI, EMBL, DDBJ) Sequences, 454 analyses and Global Key for Fungi.

The Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology organized a doctoral students' conference titled "Next generation insights into geosciences and ecology", which was held in Dorpat Conference Centre on May 12-13th. From our Lab, Kadri Koorem was the head of the organising committee, and Jaak-Albert Metsoja gave an oral presentation.

In addition to the doctoral students, plenary session were given by outstanding scientists:

* CAMILLE PARMESAN (USA)- "Creative conservation in a changing climate"
* DAVID J. SIVETER (GBR) - "Exceptionally preserved fossils: window on the evolution of life"
* DAVID A. WARDLE (SWE) - "Long term drivers of aboveground-belowground linkages: evidence from islands, chronosequences and invaders"
* MARTIN ZOBEL (EST)-  "Plant ecologist's view on mycorrhizal symbiosis"

Odile Thiéry who defended her PhD in Basel, Switzerland, joined the Plant Ecology Lab. During her postdoc, Odile will focus on the tricky concept of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal species. Read more.