Dear ICRS Members:
Michael Sweet, Raquel Pixoto, and Christian Voolstra are soliciting expressions of interest to attend an online meeting aimed at elucidating contextual variables indicative of coral health to extend cross-study comparability (see below for more detail).
The virtual workshop is planned for June 27th. To accommodate those across different time zones, the workshop will be run twice:
- 07:00-10:00am BST
- 18:00-21:00 pm BST
Please let us know your interest by filling out this google form
This workshop aims to assemble a diverse group of reef scientists to develop a set of contextual variables that (1) reflect reef health, (2) are easy to collect with standardized protocols, and thus, (3) can be collected concomitant to experimental data in order to provide a contextualized basis to facilitate comparison and cross-study analysis. Workshop participants will discuss and provide a list of meaningful contextual variables and associated protocols that can inform/extend the informational content of a study and facilitate comparability and meta-analysis. The establishment of variables that reflect reef health can also guide the development of tools to accelerate coral tolerance to stress, such as microbiome manipulation.
This workshop will be followed by an in person event held before ICRS 2022 in Bremen, Germany. Please indicate in the google form if you wish to attend this event and whether you seek funding to do so.
The final product is a manuscript that details outcomes from the workshop discussions.
We thank our funders: the journal ‘Frontiers in Marine Science’ and the ‘Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’ who have supported this venture, along with the Beneficial Microbes for Marine Organisms Network.
We look forward to hosting you,
Professors Sweet, Peixoto and Voolstra
