The second edition of the workshop about computational tools for palynological studies happened from 27th to 29th of April in 2016.
Organized by RCPol (Online Pollen Catalogs Network) and supported by Bayer Crop Science and Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo. The workshop’s objectives were: to promote a meeting between palynologists and researchers of related areas; to publicize Palynology ; to show RCPol’s website structure; to evaluate and test the species identification key; to evaluate protocols; to organize the schedule of data insertion of the collections of RCPol’s collaborators; to define RCPol’s statute and to elect the technical and scientific council members.
The workshop was divided in three stages:
First stage happened at the Prédio do Biênio in the Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo (EP/USP) in the 27th with a series of lectures that was public. Brazilian and foreign researchers attended to the event, in their lectures they showed the importance, utility and challenges of the Palynology in their areas of research. Soon we will be releasing the videos of the lectures, until then read a little about what happened:
Dr. Cláudia Inês da Silva (Universidade de São Paulo – IB/USP) opened the event presenting RCPol, our website and the species identification key that we are developing.
Dr. Soraia Girardi Bauermann (Universidade Luterana do Brasil – ULBRA) moderated the lectures.
The first lecturer was Dr. Maria de las Mercedes di Pasquo Lartigue[1] (CICYTTP-CONICET, ALPP), she spoke about the Asociación Latinoamericana de Paleobotánica y Palinologia (ALPP) and the pollen collections of Latin America.
Following, Dr. Marie-Pierre Ledru (Institut de recherché pour le déveleppement) talked about the results of her research about the paleoflora through palynology studies.
Extending the subject, Dr. Hermann Behling (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) talked about his findings relating the climate change and the Brazilian vegetation in the late quaternary through his paleopalynology studies.
After lunch, Dr. Francisco de Assis Ribeiro dos Santos (Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana – UEFS) talked about the palynotaxonomy challenges and the different ways of obtaining pollen morphology data.
Next there was a lecture about forensic palynology showing us how pollen can be used to solve crimes, this lecture was given by Dr. Paulo Eduardo de Oliveira (Universidade de São Paulo – IGc/USP).
Dr. Astrid de Matos Peixoto Kleinert (U) talked about the importance of the palynology in the search to identify the plants used in bees’ diets and also talked about how these kinds of researches happened in the Laboratório de Abelhas (IB/USP).
Continuing in the subject of pollination and pollinators, Dr. Breno Magalhaes Freitas (Universidade Federal do Ceará – CCA/UFC) talked about the IPBES and the Brazilian participation in a global scope.
Next we had Dr. Vânia Gonçalves Lourenço Esteves (Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro – MN/UFRJ) showing us the structure of the Laboratório Álvaro Xavier Moreira at the Museu Nacional of UFRJ and the importance of the lab’s palynological research through the decades.
The series of lectures was ended by the talk made by Dr. Antonio Mauro Saraiva (Universidade de São Paulo – EP/USP) talking about Biocomp (Núcleo de Pesquisa em Biodiversidade e Computação) and their studies relating pollination, pollinators and informatics.
Closing the day, Cláudia Quaglierini (Bee Care Bayer) talked about the concerns and the action of the Bee Care project in the pollinators conservation.
Only RCPol’s collaborators attended the second stage of the workshop (28th and 29th) and it took place at Bayer. Along those two days we worked in RCPol’s structure, in the evaluation of the computacional tools and the definition of the boards: the management board and the technical-scientific board. We also set goals to 2017.
Our computational tools are being improved according to the workshop experience and will be released in July 2016.
RCPol’s technical team closed the workshop having achieved all the goals that were set in its conception, thank to de attendance of remarkable researchers and theirs contribution.
We cannot forget to mention that our work was only possible on account of the approval of the project “English title” founded by Bayer Crop Science and the support given by Bee Care Bayer.
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