Picnic

Chair of Genetics, Animal Biotechnology and Immunology (where most of the balkan-trout team works) organized the second annual picnic. There was a lot of things to celebrate: the end of the school year, Tamara's PhD, Peter's birthday and good grades received by the entire research group.

More pictures available here.

New PhD

Tamara Rozman successfully defended her PhD thesis "Characterization of transferrin locus and its application in phylogenetic analysis of genus Salmo", available here. Transferrin was the marker of choice because mitochondrial markers and microsatellites (frequently used nuclear markers) have several limitations when used in phylogenetic studies. A major problem was ancient tetraploidization of salmonid genome resulting in two actively transcribed transferrin loci.

Tamara was involved in this project for a long time, partially because of this and this reason, and also because the study was carried out on third generation of marble trout × brown trout hybrids (generation time 2-3 years).

Vrljika paper

Vrljika softmouth trout paper was just published. Overview here.

Plans for this summer

Summer - no students, too hot for latex gloves, low water level, fish have nowhere to hide. Time to get as many fin clips as possible. Expect pictures in early August and late September.

(Peter provided the guidebook scennery. And a drink for the photographer.)

Young researchers

Public Tender for Early Stage Research Candidates for the Year 2008 is out (available in Slovenian and English). Those who are interested can join our group under the mentorship of Simona Sušnik.

Criteria in details and how to apply are here, briefly:

• Bachelors degree and average grade >8.00 or
  
• Completed second degree according to the Bologna process and average >8.00 or
  
• Masters degree of science
  
• Maximal age 28 years (born 1980 or after)
  

Duration of founding:

• 4.5 years (for 4 year doctoral study course)
  
• 3.5 years (for third level study according to the Bologna process)
  

Beyond trout

As of recently, we are interested in more than salmonids. More about it when we publish something. For now, here are teasers from 2 non salmonid projects.

Guess the trout

How to identify the species? Is it possible to tell by color/shape/general appearence (phenotype) which trout is brown trout (stocked Atlantic lineage, native Adriatic lineage), dentex trout, softmouth trout, marble trout or hybrid?

This question is common in internet forums. In short, the answer in most cases is no. But here is a challenge, try to identify trouts on the picture below. Write your answers in comments, wait for the results of genetic analysis.

All fish were caught in the River Neretva, where we already found several trout species, you can also choose from this list.