Past SSS-Days

SSSDay 2024: ZURICH

Workshop 31.10 and SSSDay 01.11 - Botanical garden Zurich

Workshop on Research Data Management

Our SSS-Day Workshop on Thursday, October 31st, is devoted to research data management (RDM) relevant for collection-based research projects. We will present recent developments and emerging tools for RDM, in line with the Open Research Data agenda and FAIR principles for scientific data. We will address sampling documentation in natural history collections, as well as digital tools for managing research data, making the workshop relevant both for collection managers and individual researchers.

We will start the program with an introduction and an overview on the requirements and tools for research data documentation, as outlined among others by the SNF. Further presentations will address different user stories and digital data management strategies, supported by newly developed and not yet broadly known software tools. Instructions and practical work during the day deal with using these tools, including Obsidian in combination with Zotero, and Jupyter Notebooks as part of the openBIS platform. The workshop will wrap up with a discussion among all participants about preferred approaches and further plans for technical development.

The annual meeting took place on Friday, November 1rst, at the lecture hall at the botanical garden.

Invited speakers:

Nicolas Puillandre (MNHN Paris): Integrative taxonomy, concepts and methods

Rodrigo Camara Leret (Uni Zurich): Cultural dimensions of biodiversity

The program included regular and short talks, the Master Prize Award, and the general assembly of the Society, during which we will vote for the new species of the year.

SSSDay 2022 - Geneva

The SSSDay took place on the 3-4th of Novembre 2022, hosted by the Conservatoire et Jardin Botaniques de Genève

salle de cours, Bot II (building number 3 on the map)

Thursday 03.11: Workshop on multivariate evolutionary models

Julien Cavel (Uni- Lyon I) demonstrated the R packages RPANDA (Phylogenetic ANalyses of DiversificAtion) and mvMORPH (morphometric data).

R packages to install: RPANDA, mvMORPH, Morpho, diagram.

Ideally, the version gitHub for mvMORPH is preferable. It can be installed from the package « devtools”, with a compiler already installed (e.g., gfortran ; Rtools for Windows (https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/) or tools and gfortran for MacOS (http://mac.rproject.org))

>library(devtools)

>install_github("JClavel/mvMORPH",build_vignettes = TRUE)

Thursday 03.11.2022 - Workshop

The files and examples given during the workshop are available here.

Friday 04.11.2022 - SSSDay

10:00 Registration. Coffee & Croissants
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10:30 Welcome – Nicola Schoenenberger (CJBG) & Alice Cibois (SSS)
10:45 Invited lecture - Julien Clavel (Uni-Lyon I): PhylogeneticComparative Methods for studying high-dimensional multivariate comparative data
11:30 Manuel Ruedi (MHNG): Shortcomings of DNA barcodes
11:50 AinaMichaela Randriarisoa (CJBG):Generic circumscription within subtribe Manilkarinae, cases of species delimitation within genus Labramia (Sapotaceae)
12:10 Livio Bätscher (UniBasel): Minimizing biogeographic misclassifications reduces DEC-model bias
12:30 General Assembly, including vote for the New Species of the Year
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13:00 Lunch at the Pyramus
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14:30 Master prize presentation –Serafin Streiff (IRD Montpellier): Revisiting the taxonomy of Connaraceae with herbarium phylogenomics to gain insights into their floral evolution and biogeography
14:50 Vinciane Mossion (Uppsala Univ): The common moonwort fern comprises a cryptic species complex
15:10 Short talk - Sébastien Miche (CJBG): Phylogenomics of the Geneva Flora and its integration in the canton's
green infrastructure
15:20 Short talk - Tina Kiedaisch (CJBG): Species delimitationin Malagasy Donella (Sapotaceae) using hundreds of genes sequences from old herbarium material
15:30 Coffee break
16:00 Visit of the collections
17:00 End of the meeting

SSSDay 2021 Lausanne

The SSSDay took place on the 5th of Novembre 2021, hosted by the Musée de Zoologie Lausanne

Invited speakers:

Christian Klug (Paläontologisches Institut und Museum Zürich): “Recent advances in cephalopod paleobiology”

Nicolas Salamin (UNIL, Computational Phylogenetics group) : “Modeling and Big Data to understand the evolution of biodiversity”

SSSDay - 8th of Novembre 2019 - Naturhistorisches Museum Basel

Invited speakers:

Stuart Siddell (University of Bristol): "Virus Taxonomy in the 21st Century"

Yannick Städler (University of Vienna): "X-Ray Computed Tomography of plants: new approaches and new insights into the plant phenotype for systematic and evolutionary biology"

SSSDay– 8-9 November 2018, Bern

The meeting of the Society was organized during two days with the Natural History Museum of Bern.

The first day included a workshop on fungi instructed by Beatrice Senn-Irlet, with fieldwork in the morning and hands-on on fungi systematics and identification in the afternoon. The use of genetic data in the study of Fungi was discussed, and the day ended with the SwissBOL annual meeting.

The invited lectures of the second day were:

“Why is the Cape flora so rich?” by Peter Linder (Uni Zurich)

“Using the inner ear in systematics” by Loïc Costeur (Naturhistorisches Museum Basel).

The program included the General Assembly of the Society, regular and short student talks, the Master Prize Award and the now famous selection of the Species of the year.

SSS-Day– 10 November 2017, Fribourg

This year’s annual meeting of the Society was organized with the Natural History Museum of Fribourg.

The conferences took place at the Pavillon vert at the Botanical garden of the University of Fribourg.

Invited lectures: New insights into the evolution of basal turtles by Walter Joyce (UniFr); Population dynamics of small populations - Application for the management of Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus) populations by Gwenaël Jacob (UniFr).

The program included as usual regular and short student talks, and the Master Prize Award and the general assembly of the Society.

Peter Wandeler and his colleague Emanuel Gerber presented the two museum's current exhibitions "AQUA- michel.roggo.photographie" and "RHINOSTAR".

SSS-Day– 10-11 November 2016, Sion

This year’s Society annual meeting took place at Sion, hosted by the Musée de la Nature.

Thursday 10 Nov: RevBayes workshop, led by Fredrik Ronquist (Dpt of Bioinformatics and Genetics, Swedish Museum of Natural History) and Seraina Klopfstein (UniBe and Natural History Museum Bern). RevBayes is a new software on Bayesian phylogenetic inference. It provides an interactive environment for statistical computation in evolutionary biology, in particularly phylogenetics, including modelling, simulation, and Bayesian inference. The workshop will include a basic introduction to the software for beginners and some demonstrations on how it can be used to perform highly complex analyses. The workshop is free of charge and all interested students and senior researchers are welcome. Experience with phylogenetic analyses and with the R program are an advantage.

At the end of the workshop, a visit of the museum was given by Nicolas Kramar, director.

Friday 11 Nov: SSSDay with plenary lectures, regular and short student talks, the Master Prize Award, and the General Assembly of the Society. Lecturers include Fredrik Ronquist and Jean Mariaux (Natural History Museum Geneva).

The workshop and talks were given at the salle des arsenaux, Médiathèque du Valais-Sion.

SSS-Day– Bern, 6 November 2015

This year’s Society annual meeting took place in Bern: we thank the Naturhistorisches Museum for hosting us.

Invited speakers:

Dr Robert Scotland (Oxford Univ.) “Accelerating the pace of taxonomy”. The talk will illustrate and discuss how new species are discovered in the context of plant taxonomy, and describes an initiative to accelerate the pace of revising and discovering species.

Dr Christophe Praz (UniNe) "The challenges and future of bee systematics in Europe". Despite 200 years of taxonomy, the systematics of wild bees in Europe is still insufficiently known. This talk will address current issues and present opportunities for obtaining a better understanding of these important pollinators.

“Practical Systematics” :
This new session is composed of short presentations followed by an open discussion on practical subjects relevant to systematics, including tools and softwares. Its aim is to increase the dissemination of information and discussions among the members during the SSSday.

We also had the General Assembly of the SSS and the Master Prize award.