Our fellow Swastika Issar has been working on a seminar series together with CVIF. Hear more from her on the series:
A Project to Study Marine Mollusc Diversity in Jagna Bay
Senior High School teachers with backgrounds in environmental studies, chemistry, and earth sciences have come together at the JAZC Marine Sciences Laboratory of the Central Visayan Institute Foundation, Jagna, on a DOST-supported project to study marine mollusc diversity in Jagna Bay. Keeping their varied educational backgrounds in mind, Swastika designed the CVIF-Science Corps Seminar Series as an interactive resource to aid everyone in interpreting, understanding, and communicating findings from the project.
Seven Seminars, from Ecology to DNA Barcoding
The series comprises seven lectures starting in September 2022 and going into January 2023. In the introductory seminar, the group discussed mollusc ecology and evolution in light of fundamental concepts in biodiversity, genetic variation, and natural selection. Next, they discussed how variation in mollusc morphology could result from environmental variation, such as the effect of substrate.
The "methods" and "results" modules of the series are focused on tools and techniques for quantifying mollusc diversity — DNA barcoding — followed by a crash course in sequencing data analysis. The seminar series will culminate in connecting findings from data analysis to the larger conceptual framework discussed at the beginning of the series.
