CODENET - Blagnac 98 Report

1.WORKSHOP REVIEW

 
Purpose/objectives of the workshop
The CODENET network is rather large, it includes 8 teams, most of these involve more than one institution, and we have many other actively interested colleagues. So effective organisation has always been a challenge and annual workshops are an essential part of our plans. This first workshop was especially important since it was the first opportunity for all the participants to get together, co-ordinate their activities and turn a set of good intentions into active collaborations and research programs.
 
Venue
Fortunately we have an exceptional venue for workshops, in the Chateau de Blagnac near Bordeaux in France. The chateau overlooks the Dordogne and is well away from any main roads so although the main sessions have to be held indoors, workshop sessions, coffee breaks and informal discussions inevitably occur mostly outside on the terrace or lawn. GEM (Global Emiliania Modelling) workshops have been held here almost every year since 1991 so the chateau is familiar to many coccolithophorid workers.

Participation
Some twenty eight scientists attended the workshop including all seven young visiting researchers (YVRs), almost all the scientists-in-charge and one or two other representatives from most teams. Extra participants from outside the main research teams included: Karl-Heinz Baumann (Bremen), Christian Samtleben (Kiel), Simonetta Monechi (Firenze), and Marco Pozzi (Firenze). In terms of nationality the representation was 6 Dutch, 6 Germans, 4 Italians, 3 Spanish, 3 French, and 2 each for Swiss, Portuguese and English. In addition to this nicely cosmopolitan balance there was a wide range of academic disciplines, a broad spread of research experience and a reasonable male : female balance (17:11).

CODENET review and planning
The workshop was planned to lead logically from review of background science objectives and intended research to planning sessions. It started with an introductory talk on the network as a whole by Jeremy young, including a reminder of its four-dimensional structure with 6 key taxa being studied by 8 research teams, through 14 separate sub-projects or Research Tasks, aiming to answer fundamental questions in 3 work areas. Mario Cachão, then reviewed recruitment of YVRs, and outlined the collaborations they planned.

The scientific sessions started with review talks on the six selected taxa, outlining their special features, the state of existing knowledge, and the main foci for our research on them. After this each of the research teams gave talks, mostly by the YVRs, on their research plans focussing on particular research tasks. These talks gave a rather heterogeneous overview of the research tasks, so in addition to extended abstracts from the talks I have given below summary notes on activity in each of the research tasks.

The review talks, a training session and invited research talks occupied the first two days of the workshop. On the third day the organisation of the network was reviewed relative to its objectives in the three work areas: Evolutionary Biodiversity (Jeremy Young); Microevolution and Species Level Variation (Hans Thierstein); Coccolithophorid Ecology (Marta Estrada and Patrizia Ziveri). This session provided an effective reminder of the unique potential of the network, but also highlighted the rather ambitious nature of the project and the need to co-ordinate activities if it is to get close to achieving its objectives.

The session was followed by an unscheduled workshop of the YVRs and other involved post docs, to plan the main workshop sessions the next day. They decided: (1) That planning should focus on identification of core sample sets for common study, and; (2) that excluding the "senior scientists" produced far more effective group discussions. So, on the final day the senior scientists had a workshop on the more bureaucratic aspects of network organisation, whilst the post docs planned the science and plotted new collaborations. The two groups then reconvened for a final plenary session where it was generally agreed that the network was now in an excellent shape for providing interesting training through research experience and in a pretty good shape for progressing toward its scientific objectives.
 
Scientific presentations
Open sessions for research presentations directly related to the CODENET program were scheduled at intervals through the workshop - providing welcome interludes of hard science. Christian Samtleben (Kiel) described his detailed morphometric study of Gephyrocapsa evolution through the Pleistocene. Hans Thierstein gave an overview of major time series studies of nannoplankton assemblages from Hawai and Bermuda carried out by Mara Cortes and Ali Haidar respectively. Hanno Kinkel (NIOZ) discussed comparison of estimates of coccolithophorid palaeoproductivity from organic biomarker and coccolith accumulation rates. Alberto Garcia Saez (AWI/Erlangen) discussed the latest reconstructions of haptophyte phylogeny based on 18S rRNA and RUBISCO. Volker Huss (Erlangen) explained how Ochrosphaera has a plastid genome an order of magnitude larger than in other algae or plants and outlined plans to investigate whether this was common feature of haptophytes. Karl-Heinz Baumann (Bremen) presented a wealth of data on Coccolithus pelagicus morphology variation, and especially evidence for a strongly bimodal size distribution in modern populations.
 
Training sessions
Two master class training sessions were held during the workshop. The first was on Algal Biology and Culturing. Chantal Billard (Caen) reviewed the characteristic features of haptophyte algae relative other algae and Franco Novarino (NHM) described the practicalities of isolation and culturing of live microalgae. The second was on Organic Biomarker Geochemistry. Gerard Versteegh and Hanno Kinkel (NIOZ) gave an overview of the methods and objectives of this large and rapidly developing field with a special emphasis on the uk37 paleotemperature index based on the alkenones produced by coccolithophorids.

These sessions provided an opportunity for the wide range of different scientists involved in the program to gain detailed insight into key areas of science for the project. They proved very successful and sessions on cladistic analysis of phylogenetic data and molecular biology are provisionally scheduled for next year's workshop.
 
Thanks
The workshop could not have happened without the hospitality of Jan and Dorien. Hanno, Nellie and Waldi not only did a perfect job of helping Dorien with the domestic side of the meeting but also made everyone feel specially welcome and at home. On the scientific side the VU team of Jan, Sandra and Patrizia ensured that the workshop was smoothly organised for the maximum benefit of all the other teams. As usual no-one left Blagnac without looking forward to returning.