This summer, in July 2022, both PhD students of project B08 made their way to Norway to learn more about the taxonomy of soil invertebrates and learn how to obtain good DNA barcodes of those in the course “ForBio, NIBIO, and UiB course: Taxonomy and DNA barcoding of soil organisms: nematodes (Nematoda), mites (Acari) and springtails (Collembola)” held in the NIBIO Svanhovd station (Figure 1).  The IRTG mobility grant supported the participation in the course.

Our project collaborator Dr. Oleksandr Holovachov taught us about the taxonomy of soil and freshwater nematodes and their importance in soil communities. We were taught how to perform sampling, extraction (Figure 2) and identification (Figure 3) of these invertebrates. Especially, learning all the important characteristics of the morphology of soil and freshwater nematodes will help in the on-field identification of sampled nematodes in the Atacama Desert and will help in relating found organisms to the biodiversity of the desert as some nematode species found might not be viable in culture. In combination with DNA barcoding the diversity of those desert nematodes can be documented. Extreme environments include not only dry desert but also cold environments like the polar regions and nematodes can be found in broad ranges of extreme habitats. The NIBIO Svanhovd station is located within the northern polar circle surrounded by eastern Siberian taiga and western Boreal forests. In winter temperatures sometimes fall to almost -40 °C and summers are mild with an average of about 15 °C. Even though this environment differs from the hyperarid Atacama Desert, we would expect some families of soil nematodes to occur in both environments as they are known to be generalist. For example, this is the case for the family of Panagrolaimidae or Cephalobidae where some nematode species are found to be colonizers with short generation times and tolerance to disturbed environments. As such, skills obtained during this course in Northern Norway will help both PhD students in future excursions to Chile, since they learned how to combine collection, extraction, morphological and molecular identification of soil invertebrates.

Author: Laura Pettrich 

We want to thank all speakers for their presentation and all scientists who worked within the presented projects. This lecture series gave an in-depth look into the recent status and development of our subprojects and subsequent discussion proved to be essential to further grow our understanding of the earth evolution at the dry limit and to improve our scientific interdisciplinary collaboration. Due to our ‘hybrid’ format, in persona and on the screens at home, we had the opportunity to follow the talks live in Chile, Namibia and in other parts of the world, to further strengthen our cooperation, scientific exchange and partnership to our colleagues around the world. We are looking forward to hear more exciting science and outcomes from our CRC1211 in the next lecture series.

Thank you all for your participation at this CRC1211 Summer Semester Lecture Series.

Author: B.Ritter

On the 28^th and 29^th of June up to 15 scientists from the geological survey of Chile participated at an online short course about the use and application of cosmogenic nuclides for dating surfaces and terrestrial archives. Dr. Benedikt Ritter offered this course to our colleagues in Chile in the spirit of knowledge exchange between the CRC1211 and the geological service of Chile and to foster ongoing and future collaborations. During the two-day workshop, the participants learned the background knowledge about cosmogenic nuclides, their source, production and their application as dating tool.

The workshop was concluded with some talks by geologists from the Sernageomin about recent ongoing projects and the potential use of cosmogenic nuclides to answer important geological questions with a social background and necessity, such as landslide dating, neotectonic uplift, dating of ignimbrites or meteorite scoria material. Due to this short course and the subsequently discussion we will further extend and deepen our collaboration with the Sernageomin and the CRC1211 in the future.

Author: B.Ritter