Workshop Program and Abstracts (PDF,463Kb)12-16 September 2011 | Zoological Institute RAS, St. Petersburg, Russia
Prof. M. R Miracle (Valencia, Spain)
Academician NAS Ukraine V. I Monchenko (Kiev, Ukraine)
Deputy-member of RAS O.N. Pugachev (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Prof. S. Suissi (Lille, France)
Victor Alekseev (ZIN RAS, Russia), Chairman
Natalia Malysh (ZIN RAS, Russia)
Tatiana Lazareva (ZIN RAS, Russia)
Natalie Sukhih (SPbSU, Russia), Secretary
Roman Khalikov (ZIN RAS, Russia), Technical assitance
RFBR national and international grants:
BILATERAL UKRAINE -RFBR N 10-04-90420
BILATERAL UKRAINE –RFBR N 11-04-90551
RFBR 11-04-06068
This workshop is mainly devoted to bring together scientific teams dealing with study of the biodiversity in copepods, with emphasis on sibling or twin species. Sibling species are morphologically very close but genetically and ecologically isolated. This phenomenon was known since 19 century but real investigation in this field among Copepods as well as other aquatic invertebrates has been started only recently. The real interest to this problem arisen when international biodiversity program had been announced and new relatively fast and quite objective molecular-genetic methods had been appeared. Biological invasion problem also brought an additional interest to sibling species separation. Recent studies with barcode using in Baltic Sea showed that mass species Eurytemora affinis was substituted in some areas of the sea by North American sibling species Eurytemora carolleeae that had been arrived possibly with ship ballast waters (Alekseev at al. 2009). As copepods are one of the most important group of invertebrates in aquatic ecosystems they are intensively studied by taxonomists and systematics in many countries. Many cyclopid species especially from southern countries are known as intermediate host of parasites and human diseases including such serious illness like cholera. These copepod species due to climate changes and human mediated transportation move to northern countries that is not studied well both in Ukraine and Russia. Our study was aimed to verify the role of sibling species in local biodiversity in fresh and brackish water bodies in both countries including watersheds of two common seas (Azov and Black Seas) and two reference (Caspian and White Seas) seas. The first results of this study are discussed. The workshop major purpose will be creation of new teams and international projects to study sibling species in aquatic invertebrates.