Dear NORA members and oyster enthusiasts,
I’m a postdoc at GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany, and my current project is on the dispersal of marine diseases with ocean currents. In the first case study, I’m looking at the spread of Bonamia between European oyster populations in the wild, in aquaculture and also at restoration sites. A specific aim is to provide an infection risk assessment for restoration sites based on connectivity by ocean currents. That’s is how I just recently got into contact with NORA and many friendly people in the network.
Currently, I’m writing a proposal for my next position and…
…for a follow-up on the oyster disease dispersal, I would be really interested to compare the predictions of the models with the actual infection status of the restored populations. Since the restored sites were seeded with disease-free individuals, monitoring these populations is the ideal dataset to look at disease spread and transmission.
Therefore, I would like to ask the NORA community if there is an interest to collaborate on this, and if you have infection status monitoring data that you would like to share in form of a collaboration? Or if you have samples that still need to be monitored? I could also include funding to screen samples based on histology and qPCR in the application.
Since the project is not funded yet, for now I would just need a note that you would be interested. If the project is funded, it would start in the beginning of 2024. Please get in touch with Lara Schmittmann: lschmittmann@geomar.de
Lara Schmittmann