Outgroup
Alongside my main scientific interests and projects, I am also involved in various smaller projects, in workshop organization, teaching, scientific outreach, and voluntary projects.
Workshop organization and teaching
• In 2016, we arranged a new agenda for the Evomics workshop series: The Workshop on Population and Speciation Genomics in Český Krumlov. It was a challenging but valuable experience to organize an entirely new workshop format with exellent speakers and as many as 70 participants! As part of this workshop I also prepared and taught an exercise about handling and processing of genomic sequencing data, which is available on the workshop's homepage: FileFormats.VCFtools.PLINK.
• In 2018, 2020, and 2022, we repeated our successfull workshop on Population and Speciation Genomics in Český Krumlov with another fantastic faculty and highly motivated participants and we summarized our experience in an acticle now in press in Evolution: Education and Outreach.
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Barth JMI, Handley S, Kintzl D, Leonard G, Malinsky M, Matschiner M, Meyer BS, Salzburger W, Stefka J, Trucchi E. The history and organization of the Workshop on Population and Speciation Genomics.
Evolution: Education and Outreach (2023) 16:2. doi.org/10.1186/s12052-023-00182-w |
Teaching molecular evolution
In the autumn semesters 2021 and 2022 the "Molecular Evolution" part of the Evolutionary genetics lecture at the University of Basel was given jointly by Walter Salzburger and myself. You can find the practicals to this course on my GitHub page.
I was part of the teaching team at the 2015 Workshop on Molecular Evolution held in the beautiful Czech UNESCO World Heritage town Český Krumlov, focusing on applying phylogenetic methods to genomic data.
Outreach and popular science
• Barth JMI & Salzburger W. Irrt die Evolution auch manchmal? Vsao Journal (2021) 2
Assisting in fieldwork and volunteering in conservation
• Every year in autumn, thousands of migratory birds cross the Swiss Alps on their way to their winter quarters. The extent and timing of these migrations is monitored by the Swiss Ornithological Institute through catching, measuring, ringing, and subsequent release of the birds at Col de Bretolet, a mountain pass at about 2,000 m of altitude. In autumn 2021, I spent two weeks at the station, helping with mist netting, catching and releasing the birds.
• Collecting data to help the UiO sparrow group deciphering hybrid speciation: See one of the group's newest publication here. We did mist netting, measured the birds, took blood samples, and ringed the sparrows.
• Building a fence to protect a Fairy prion colony. See the NZ Herald article about the now finished fence here. And a very nice documentary about the construction here.
• Counting nests and eggs of Yellow-eyed penguins, and catching and measuring Yellow-eyed penguin chicks
• Catching Bar-tailed godwits utilizing cannon-netting
• Monitor and band New Zealand South-Island robins
• Studying the breeding ecology of birds high in the Ecuadorian Andes, download the resulting publication here
Assisting in research projects during my studies
• Isolating, characterizing and evolutionary comparing prion-protein (PrP) genes from lower vertebrates
• Designing and cloning of DNA constructs for the generation of knock-out mice
