2018 – Edition

Ecology through the omics lens

Presentation of the edition

The Ramon Margalef Summer Colloquium (RMSC) has been running yearly since 2013 (www.acoio.org/margalef-summer-colloquia) and aims at training young researchers in Ecology, as well as promoting their networking and debate with invited lecturers as well as among themselves. The Colloquium is inspired in the figure of Ramon Margalef (Barcelona, 1919-2004), who was one of the founders of modern ecology. He broke paradigms and contributed with innovative theories about the spatiotemporal structure of ecosystems, the relationships between diversity, biodiversity, stability and connectivity, the fundamental role of energy in biological productivity as well as the interrelationships between ecological succession and evolution. He recognized the importance of the physical environment to understand the behavior of species and ecosystems. He wrote ca. 400 papers and books, working for many years at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (www.icm.csic.es) and the University of Barcelona (www.ub.edu), Spain.

Organization

We believe this 6th Colloquium will, again, be an excellent opportunity to foster learning and discussions on the relevance of an interdisciplinary perspective in Ecology & Evolution. We expect to attain this important aim through a very dynamic colloquium with an important component of discussion, exchange of ideas and research.
The scientific organization of the RMSC-2018 will be provided by ICM-CSIC and the logistics will be taken care by the Catalan Association of Oceanographers (ACOIO). The course organizers are Javier del Campo, Ramiro Logares and Cèlia Marrasé.

The main site for the course will be the facilities of the Institute of Marine Sciences (Institut de Ciències del Mar, ICM-CSIC), near downtown Barcelona and close to university lodging (Resa Website). Students will need to take care of their lodging in Barcelona. Please see under the accommodation item for further details.

Content

The use of omics techniques has spread rapidly across the field of Ecology and Evolution during the last decade, but there is substantial work ahead to link the obtained results with the existent ecological theory. During the 2018 Ramon Margalef Summer Colloquium we will make an effort to bridge this gap, aiming to inspire attending students to move from “what” to “why” when using omics approaches to study the ecosystem, as well as to frame their omics-based research in a theoretical ecological framework.

The course will cover different environments (marine, terrestrial, host associated) as well as organismal sizes (from microbes to plants and animals), thus becoming an excellent opportunity to bring together researchers with similar questions, but working in fields that seldom communicate between each other. Furthermore, this edition of the course will focus on the feedbacks between ecology and evolution, and how the processes studied by both disciplines shape the structure of life on earth.

We are convinced this 6th Colloquium will be, again, an excellent opportunity to foster learning and discussions on the relevance of an interdisciplinary perspective in Ecology & Evolution. Typically, we have 30 international as well as Spanish students and postdocs at the Seminar, along with a handful of mentors.

The past Seminars were hugely successful among attendees due to their unique interactive setting for sharing and presenting cutting-edge research. This coming year we plan to bring together a diverse, international group of young scientists studying ecosystems and using the most novel “omics” techniques to learn about new developments in this rapidly advancing field, share ideas, as well as build future collaborations. We plan also to invite local and international lecturers that work at the forefront of ecological and evolutionary research, applying state-of-the-art omics approaches.

program

Sunday 8 July

Afternoon

Icebreaker
Welcome: Josep Lluís Pelegrí Director of the Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Spain

Monday 9 July

Morning

8:30h Welcome to the VI Ramon Margalef Summer Colloquia, Javier del Campo and Ramiro Logares, Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC),
9:00h   Silvia G. Acinas Revealing keystone ocean prokaryotic genomes Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC)
11:00h Marta Pascual Population connectivity and adaptation in marine eukaryotes Universitat de Barcelona
14:00h Salvador Almagro-Moreno Evolutionary approaches to understand Vibrionaceae niche colonization University of Central Florida

Afternoon

15:30h Student presentations

Tuesday 10 July

Morning

9:00h   Eric Pelletier Ocean ‘omics: A large scale multidisciplinary analysis path to study marine micro-organisms Genoscope, CEA, France
11:00h Marta Goberna Microbial diversity, evolutionary legacies and the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems Centre d’Investigacions sobre Desertificació (UV-CSIC)

Afternoon

14:00h Jed Fuhrman Marine microbial ecological and biogeochemical processes: integration of classic and omics approaches
University of Southern California, USA

Wednesday 11 July

Morning

9:00h   Naiara Rodríguez-Ezpeleta Making sense of omics data for making ecologically informed marine ecosystem and resource management decisions11:00h Esther Garcés
11:00h Esther Garcés Shaping marine microbial food webs: the role of marine parasites
12:30h Purificación López-García Inferring metabolic function and interactions from metagenomes of complex microbial communities

Afternoon

17:00h Visit the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)

Thursday 12 July

Morning

9:00h  Sergio Vallina Ecological evolution (eco-evo) modelling and comparative genomics: mind the gap
Instituto Español de Oceanografia
11:00h Damien Eveillard Investigating microbial ecosystems: a computational journey from co-occurrence to metabolic networks
Université de Nantes

Afternoon

14:00h Santiago F. Elena
Experimental host-range expansion in a plant RNA virus: an interplay between viral fitness and regulation of host’s transcriptome
15:30h Discussions

Friday 13 July

Morning

9:00h Student presentations

Afternoon

14:00h Round table

Carles Pedrós-Alió, National Center for Biotechnology (CSIC), Spain
Marta Estrada, Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Spain
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo, Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (UPF-CSIC), Spain

Team

Course directors

Celia Marrasé, ICM-CSIC, Spain, tel.+34 932309591, e-mail: celia@icm.csic.es,
Josep Lluís Pelegrí, ICM-CSIC, Spain, tel. +34 932309514, e-mail: pelegri@icm.csic.es

Key participating scientists

Silvia G. Acinas Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC)
Marta Pascual Universitat de Barcelona
Salvador Almagro-Moreno University of Central Florida, USA
Eric Pelletier Genoscope, CEA, France
Marta Goberna Centre d’Investigacions sobre Desertificació (UV-CSIC)
Jed Fuhrman University of Southern California
Naiara Rodríguez-Ezpeleta AZTI, Spain
Esther Garcés Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC)

Purificación López-García Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution, Université Paris-Sud-CNRS, France
Sergio Vallina, Instituto Español de Oceanografia
Damien Eveillard, Université de Nantes, France
Santiago F. Elena, Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas (IBMCP), CSIC-UPV, València
Carles Pedrós-Alió, National Center for Biotechnology (CSIC), Spain
Marta Estrada, Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC), Spain
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo, Institut de Biologia Evolutiva (UPF-CSIC), Spain

Institutional support OF THE EDITION