Author: Rose Upton
From the 5th - 9th of August the CSRG headed to Kuching in the Sarawak region of Borneo for the 10th World Congress of Herpetology. Among them, Dr Rose Upton and Dr Kaya Klop-toker, participated in the symposium, “Developing Global Collaborations for Amphibian Biobanking and Genetic Management”. This exciting symposium was organized and hosted by Dr Gina Della-Tonga and Dr Natalie Calatyud of the Amphibian Survival Alliance, whom our group has recently partnered with. Rose spoke about the integrated conservation approaches, combing In situ and Ex situ management of species, including biobanking sperm from endangered species, and spoke on behalf of PhD student, Anne Ibbtoson about her exciting new research developing minimally invasive biomarkers for assessing amphibian health. Kaya spoke on behalf of PhD student, Nadine Nolan on her work investigating the effect of season on Littlejohn’s tree frog sperm quality. While Dr Alex Callen and Dr John Clulow could not attend, they were both integral in helping push these projects to fruition and their presence was missed.
In the spirit of the event, we were able to catch up with long time collaborators and colleagues from the United States, Panama, and Scotland. We also made new friends from Canada, New Zealand, the United States and even Australia. Also attending the symposium was Professor Michael Mahony and PhD student Krishna Pavan Komanduri. We had exciting discussions on progress, gaps and priorities for movement in this field, with plans to write a white paper based on the discussions held there.
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