DEST - Taxonomy Training

This course has been established in the framework of the Erasmus Mundus Master of sciences in Marine Biodiversity and conservation and gives an introduction on the practical aspects related to taxonomy work. During the course the following topics are handled: 1. General introduction to taxonomy and systematics including nomenclature rules, history of taxonomy, collection management. 2. Introduction and exercises on cladistics: both morphology based and molecular based cladistic analysis are tackled. Students carry out exercises on specimen collection in order to understand issues like apomorphies, morphological variability, … 3. Practical aspects and implications of Identification and Identification keys: students learn to know different kinds of identification keys and also get exercises to build new ones both using classical methods producing dichotomous paper keys and using software based identification tools. 4. Digital taxonomy: during this package students are introduced to the current evolutions going on in digital taxonomy. They learn to know the different initiatives going on in this field and get a serious of exercise exploring these facilities.