Visiting Johannes

Saša, who is staying in Slovenia at the moment, Aleš and his wife Nada visited Johannes Schöffmann and his wife Ida in St. Veit, Austria. We admired Johannes’s rich collection of stuffed salmonids exposed across the living-room wall and enjoyed a lunch prepared by Ida. In the evening, we tasted delicious cakes from Franz Schöffmann Bäckerei und Konditorei, made by Johannes himself.

Inspired by beer and wine, we were discussing Moroccan trout and planning future projects and field trips…Algeria seems to be the next tempting destination.

Unfortunately, most of the taken pictures were accidently deleted from the camera.

Gödöllő

Last week, Dušan, Zoran and Aleš spent four pleasant days in Hungary visiting Dr. Ákos Horváth and his team working at the Department of Aquaculture, Szent István University in Gödöllő. The visit was made in a frame of Slovene-Hungarian bilateral project "Cryopreservation of sperm and establishment of a cryobank of the Adriatic grayling (Thymallus thymallus) from the Soča river".

Besides doing some cryo-lab work, we also took this opportunity to sample three locations in Bükki Nemzeti Park, supposedly inhabited by native brown trout populations (genetic testing underway). We also visited Lillafüred trout breeding farm close to Miskolc run by Mr. György Hoitsy. Here we ate an excellent cat-fish goulash with baked pasta and white cheese cooked by his wife.

On the last day of our visit, the Hungarian colleagues along with Dr. Zoran Spirkovski from Hydro Biological Institute (Ohrid, Macedonia) presented their initiative for organizing the 2nd Conference for Conservation & Management of Balkan Freshwater Fishes (COMBAFF), which should be held in September 2010 in Hungary. Aleš was invited to participate in scientific committee... OK, he couldn't say no.

Annual testing of marble trout from zone of hybridization

Just like last year and a year before that, we performed genetic testing of fish from the zone of hybridization. This year we have received fin clips from 43 individually tagged trout from lower Trebuščica (the upper is home to one of 8 genetically pure populations of marble trout). These samples were checked for non native genetic characteristic on 5 nuclear genetic markers (each genetic marker in 2 copies, one allele inherited from each parent) and on 1 mitochondrial genetic marker (in 1 copy, inherited from the mother only). Out of 43 samples, 13 show signs of hybridization with non native trout, 4 sample will not be used because of low quality of DNA isolate (not included in the table). Eggs and sperm will be taken from 26 trout with no detectable brown trout genetic characteristics, fertilised and raised in the hatchery, released back in the zone of hybridization. DNA isolation and genotyping was carried out by Gašper.

Below is a simplified table of genotypes. These genotypes are not publishable, since the initial sampling was biased, only marble trout (by general appearance) were sampled, so the actual percentage of non native alleles in sampled locations might differ from our results (8.2% for nuclear markers, 2.6% for mtDNA marker).

Table of genotypes across 1 mitochondrial and 5 nuclear markers. Samples with non native (=brown trout alleles) are marked red and will not be used in restoration program. M - marble trout specific allele, B - brown trout specific allele.

LIFFe 2009

LIFFe stands for Ljubljana International Film Festival. To be honest, most people still refer to the festival as LIFF (especially those who are aware of the meaning of liff). As mentioned last year, BTRG selects a movie with a fish related title. There were 5 movies to choose from this year, last year's winner was Encounters at the End of the World, this year it was Fish Tank. There is hardly a place for fish in an English social drama, but several things were unexpectedly connected to our work. For instance, there actually was a fishing scene and a memorable "fish are stupid" quote. The main actor was Michael Fassbender, who also played in Inglourious Basterds, last movie we saw as a part of team building. And of course, the main music theme was Bobby Womack's version of California dreamin', a very appropriate song just 2 months before Urška and Aleš will represent BTRG at the Plant and genome conference on a winter's day in the same state.
Anyway, Tamara, Urška and Andrej attended this year's LIFFe event, along with Daliborka and her team as special guest stars. Anja and Aleš were absent at the last minute notice due to emergency sampling expedition. In the boss's absence there was enough time for conversation and some gossiping after the movie (until the waitress kicked us out).

Otočec Congress and Dubrovnik

BTRG has attended Joint Congress of Slovenian Biochemical Society and Slovenian Genetic Society held in Otočec from September 20 - 23, 2009 participating four posters. Right after the congress, Anja, Urška, Gašper and Aleš proceeded to Mostar, where they visited prof. Bogut, and while sightseeing Mostar, discussed some possibilities of future cooperation between Slovenia, BiH and Croatia. After visiting Baćina lakes, they went to Dubrovnik to meet prof. Branko Glamuzina of the University of Dubrovnik and discuss with him common projects to be applied in near future.

During weekend, BTRG relaxed in cozy accommodation in the town of Zaton close to Dubrovnik, where they enjoyed boating, fishing and sea-food.

Some pics from the congress:

Some pics from Mostar, Dubrovnik and a lot of places in between:

ESEB 2009

European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) organized 12th congress in Turin, Italy ( 24 -29 August 2009), BTRG was represented by Anja and Urška. It was Urška’s first big congress and her experience is worth posting (after some censorship). BTRG contribution was a poster: Identification of candidate genes involved in skin colouration in Salmo sp. by microarray analysis.

Check the gallery.

My ESEB 2009 experience:

Day 1: Welcome drink

The venue was Politecnico di Torino, a fascinating building with a huge inside court and a staircase from which it was possible to monitor what was going on. Drink and snacks were available. *** alcohol *** juice *** some salty fish ***, but Anja liked it. I abstained from other snacks ***. Finally reached the hotel and get some hard earned sleep.

Day 2-6: Breakfast, lectures, coffee break, lectures, lunch ***, poster session/lectures, shopping, sleep.

Lectures were a BIG disappointment. Most criticism deserve older, "experienced" speakers who had promising starts, but soon lost the tread (and consequently my attention) and finished in such a way that I couldn't understand if the results were good or bad. I can claim with 100% certainty that younger speakers were 1000× better. One of the few good senior speakers started with a one sentence hypothesis and continued with results that were totally unexpected. He concluded the results with "What went wrong?" and then discussed them. Another good speaker had a lecture: "Is life impossible?" (1st slide), No (2nd slide), Acknowledgment (3rd slide) was accompanied by laughter from the audience. Of course he did explain it, but he went on so fast it was hard to follow (well, he was a mathematician). Most of other senior speakers obviously were attending several congresses in the past, using old power point files with 40+ slides attempting to read them in half an hour. And then you hear "We will skip that one", "We don't have time,.....", I don't care how much time you have or not, be prepared for a 25 min presentation and a 5 min discussion. *** and *** are terrible speakers with some singing version of English. And then of course there are coughing speakers not intelligent enough to drink some water. *** So much about speakers.

Lunches? *** no idea *** very dry *** did not eat *** Shopping in the city, a disappointment, vacation time, most shops closed or with unusual open hours *** English language skills *** For the most part, I used my hands. Thumbs up for ice cream and chocolate.

I liked the hotel, meals there were OK, a lot of things to choose from, the room was unusually decorated, but I slept fine.

And that is all I can say about my ESEB 2009 experience.

Second trip to Morocco (August 2009)

First trip to Morocco was last year (here & here). During the second field trip two more sampling sites were added, a few more locations checked were troutless. Participants were Aleš, Saša, Johnnes & daughter. For more pictures click here.

ADDED: Just received a note from Aleš. This trip was actually the third expedition to Morocco. The first was already in June 2006, predating this blog. The participants at that time were Johannes with his daughter, Aleš with his wife and Said of the University Cadi Ayyad.