£200 Bursary competition for Benthic Taxonomy Summer School

The Marine Biological Association is offering two £200 bursaries towards the cost of the summer school, open to anyone registering for the above course.  Applicants should apply in writing (or email) using the form which can be downloaded from the link below. Applicants are asked to send a short letter/email (max 200 words) outlining why they are attending the summer school, and what they hope to achieve. Successful applicants will agree to produce a short (half page) report for the MBA and MESL websites, as well as a 100 word paragraph for use in MBA and MESL Newsletters on the benefit on receiving an MBA bursary in order to attend the taxonomy summer school.

The deadline for applications is the 13th April 2012.

Download application form.

Benthic Taxonomy Summer School 18th – 29th June 2012

The two week Benthic Taxonomy Summer School provides students with hands-on experience, working in the marine environment and an introduction to species identification skills. The course will build upon practical sampling and identification skills which many students will have gained during related undergraduate degree courses and provides skill and experience vital to those wishing to pursue a commercial or academic career in Marine Biology.

During the first week students have the opportunity to carry out both intertidal and subtidal sampling, using equipment that is routinely used for both commercial and academic collections. Samples collected in the field will be sorted and identified back in the laboratory giving students a taste of the biodiversity found in British seas. The second week of the course focuses on the identification of marine polychaetes and amphipods, two of the most commonly encountered groups of benthic invertebrates.  

Participants are given the option of attending either or both weeks of the summer school. The summer school will be held at the resource centre at the Marine Biological Association of the UK where students will also have access to the National Marine Biological Library and other MBA resources.

Week 1. Marine Sampling and Species Identification
Week one of the summer school will  include an introductory lecture  given by John Rundle, an expert aquarist from the Marine Biological Association (MBA), with several decades of experience collecting and breeding marine invertebrates for academic research. This will be followed by an introduction to benthic taxonomy and its role in marine developments and conservation. Intertidal sampling will be carried out on local sandy and rocky shores and subtidal sampling with grabs, trawls and plankton hauls will be carried out onborad the MBA Sepia. Samples collected during this time will be returned to the marine aquariums housed in the MBA and will be identified to species with the assistance of some of MES’s senior taxonomists.  
During this week there will also be a series of lectures and practical sessions which aim to familiarise students with the general morphology and diversity of species that exist within the most common groups of marine invertebrates (Crustacea, Annelida, Mollusca, Echinodermata, Cnidaria, Bryozoa, etc). The course will also be supplemented with short lectures on the reproductive strategies of marine invertebrates and practical applications of benthic taxonomy.

Week 2. Marine Polychaete and Gammarid Amphipod Identification
The second week of the Benthic Taxonomy Summer School focuses on the identification of marine Polychaetes and Gammarid Amphipods and will be predominantly lab based with identification sessions guided by experienced senior taxonomists from MES. The first three days will be spent looking at polychaetes using specimens collected in week one as well as those from the MES reference collection. This will expose the students to a wide variety of polychaete families and species and will give them an insight into the diversity that exists within this phylum as well as some of the skills necessary to identify polychaetes.  

The final two days of the course will be spent exploring the morphological features which allow us to differentiate between British Gammarid Amphipod families. This section of the course will use the key text for this field, the 1977 book of British Marine Amphipoda: Gammaridea by Roger J. Lincoln.

There will be a number of identification tests carried out throughout the Summer School programme as a means of monitoring the progress of participants. At the end of the course students will be awarded with a certificate which will detail the components of the course in which they have actively participated and the level of competency achieved.

Scheduled course activities will run from 9am to 5pm but the resource centre will also be open to students in the evenings and the taxonomists from MES will be on hand to provide further assistance. This may be particularly useful for students wishing to work on their own samples or those wishing to advance their skills in a particular area of taxonomy.
 
There are two MBA scholarships available which will contribute £200 towards the cost of this course. Details of how you can apply for this grant scheme will be available shortly.