The 'protistology workshop' is a part of the 'Assembling the eukaryotic tree of life' project funded by the National Science Foundation. The workshop will train researchers in basic protistology skills and will develop Protistiary' - a communal on-line resources for protistology. This manual complements other initiatives to improve the availability of on-line information about microbes (micro*scope) and of educational materials in microbiology (Microbial Life).
Why we need a manual
Expertise in traditional skills of protistology, particularly of protozoology, is declining because experts are retiring from universities around the world and are not being replaced. This reduces the skill base of protistology. This workshop will lead to the production of a manual that addresses this problem.
Workshop 2005
The content of the workshop will change from year to year - to meet the needs of 'Protistiary' and of the people attending the workshop.
The primary faculty includes:
Guest Lecturers:
Participants 
In 2005, we will emphasize:
- field collections (isolation, cleaning, and rendering into culture species from marine and freshwater habitats)
- observation and documentation by light microscopy
- creating 'voucher' records for all species that are studied within the NSF project
- interpretation of electron micrographs (development of 'ultrastructural identities' of species; reconstruction of internal architecture)
- development of an on-line glossary
- adding to micro*scope - an internet-based repository of descriptive information
In addition to developing field and laboratory skills, the workshop will require, inter alia, familiarization with web-page authoring and image processing software, such as Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop. During the course we will develop new functions and services within our knowledge management environment. To this end, any delegates with code-writing skills should be aware that we run a PHP-MySQL environment.
Workshop Deliverables
This year, the workshop will cover the following topics:
- Isolation, purification and culturing of free-living protists
- Photodocumentation of protists
- Interpretation of electron micrographs of protists.
At the end of this workshop it is our expectation that participants should:
- have a fair understanding of the overall diversity of protists
- understand where microbes may occur, to be able to take field samples, isolate protists, and understand what is required to render them into culture
- be able to research the diagnostic characters of organisms under study
- make photographic documentation of organisms emphasizing the diagnostic characters
- understand the needs and requirements for vouchering and be able to implement vouchering
- understand the concept of ultrastructural identities
- be able to interpret electron micrographs
- understand at is involved in reconstructing the internal architecture of the cell.
- be familiar with Photoshop and Dreamweaver software
- be able to build web pages addressing issues of protistan biology
- be able to submit material to the micro*scope web site
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0431185.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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