ACRS24

This year, the ACRS are delighted to offer two workshops, as well field trips to the WA Museum. These will be run on Monday 6th May, the day before the start of the conference. There is no additional cost for these workshops however places are limited – ensure to register early if you strongly wish to attend! Please be aware that the workshops will run concurrently and so only apply for ONE workshop when registering. Additional details of the workshops are provided below.

UPDATE: All workshops are now FULL

Agenda Monday 6th May

09:00 am – 2.30 pm – Australian coral reef monitoring workshop – opportunities, benefits and challenges. OceanWorks Lounge, IOMRC building, level 2, UWA Campus.

11.30 am – 1.30 pm – MixOmics workshop – Multivariate data integration using R. Boardroom, IOMRC building, level 5, UWA Campus.

9.30 am, 11.45 am and 2 pm – WA Museum Tour (closed shoes are essential), UPDATE: 2pm tour now fully booked!

MixOmics Workshop

MixOmics R-WORKSHOP – Multivariate data integration using R

(18 participants)

Workshop leads:

Patrick Buerger, Cheong Xin Chan

Workshop details:

Advancements in next-generation sequencing methods have revolutionised data generation. Several omics data sets are commonly created in a single experiment, such as transcriptomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics. In this R-workshop, we will introduce the MixOmics package to process multiple omics data sets in a single integrated analysis. Using a published case study of the Breast Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA Dataset, including miRNA, mRNA, and protein abundances), we will briefly run through some published code and apply different analyses and frameworks, such as PCA, PLS-DA (supervised), sparse PLS-DA (supervised + data reduction), and multiblock sparse PLS-DA (DIABLO). The 2-hour workshop is designed for participants with a foundation in R programming and omics concepts. Although we are using the MixOmics TCGA data, you are more than welcome to bring your own data as well. Please install the following packages before the workshop: mixOmics, tidyverse, and markdown.

Links: http://mixomics.org/mixdiablo/diablo-tcga-case-study

Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) -ReefCloud Workshop

Australian coral reef monitoring – opportunities, benefits and challenges

(25 participants)

Workshop leads:

Britta Schaffelke, Manuel Gonzalez, Emma Kennedy

Workshop agenda:

• AM: 30 min introduction – 2 hour discussion around an Australian GCRMN node
• Lunch break
• PM: 1 hour practical introduction to ReefCloud platform (laptops required)

Workshop details:

Since 1995, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN), an operational network of the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), has nurtured a global community dedicated to coral reef conservation by providing a platform to exchange data and share knowledge, expertise, innovative ideas and diverse perspectives*. The GCRMN operates through 10 regional “nodes”, representing the countries that are custodians of coral reefs across all ocean basins.

While each region has its own priorities and challenges for coral reefs, from protection and resource use to management, governance and research needs, the network that is bound together through the ability to learn from each other and exchange knowledge.

Compared to other GCRMN regions, Australia is not an active regional node in the strict sense. Data across Australian reefscapes are collected for various purposes, including regular reports with various geographic scopes, for example Great Barrier Reef or national State of the Environment reporting. The majority of coral reef monitoring data are collected, analysed and reported by the long-term monitoring program of AIMS, the CSIRO, State departments (e.g., the WA Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, DBCA) and citizen science initiatives like Reef Life Survey and Reef Check. Data from many of these providers have also been contributed to the most recent Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2020 report, produced by the GCRMN.

The workshop aims at exploring opportunities, benefits and challenges in establishing and maintaining and active Australian GCRMN node. Examples of the benefits for improved regional communication and collaboration would be the continued improvement of best practices for coral reef monitoring, and the sharing and integrating data and information at various scales. With this in mind, the second part of the workshop is designed around the benefits around using the ReefCloud platform, including some hands-on exploration of the tools, analysis and visualization products.

Western Australian Museum Aquatic Zoology Collections and Specimen Spotlight Tour

(8 participants per time slot. Participants MUST wear closed shoes)

Name of Organizers: 

Marine Invertebrate Curator, Associate Professor Zoe Richards

Head of Aquatic Zoology, Mollusc Curator, Dr Lisa Kirkendale

Head of Science, Associate Professor Jennifer McIllwain

 

Brief Summary:

The Western Australian Museum Harry Butler Research and Collection Centre houses over 2.5 million wet specimens in custom-build state of the art facilities. Amongst those collections are a plethora of marine and coral reef specimens that have been collected by Curators, Research Associates and Collaborators over the last 100 years. The collection is split into four sections – fishes, molluscs, crustaceans and worms and marine invertebrates (capturing hard corals, soft corals, sponges, echinoderms, anemones, bryozoans, tunicates, jellyfish and more). Collected from remote and tropical locations such as Cocos (Keeling) Islands and the Kimberley, along with isolated southern temperate locations such as Esperance and deep-sea canyons, the highly sought-after collection provides a unique assortment of excellently maintained specimens from the Eastern Indian Ocean and beyond.

The goal of this tour is to introduce visitors to the four Aquatic Zoology collections with the view of initiating new collaborative opportunities and inspiring more taxonomic research on Australian marine biodiversity. The tour will also include a specimen spotlight session where sectional Curators (Dr Glenn Moore, Fishes; Dr Lisa Kirkendale, Molluscs; Dr Andrew Hosie, Crustacea and Worms; A/P Zoe Richards, Marine Invertebrates), will take visitors on a deep dive into the biology and evolution of select rare, unique, or unusual specimens in their care.

Location: Western Australian Harry Butler Research and Collections Centre, 49 Kew Street, Welshpool.

Approximate tour time: 1.5 – 2 hours