Practical experience with morphology-based species identification is in high demand in both basic and applied biological research. You will study applied taxonomy, acquire identification and field collection skills, as well as learn how to prepare and mount the specimens for preservation in museum collections.
This course will provide training in the identification of Boreal and Arctic groups of flowering plants. The teaching will take place in Skibotn area with remarkably high species number for such northern latitudes (68-69 degrees N) challenging the general concept that species richness decreases as latitude increases. Daily excursions to both lowland and mountain habitats will be combined with practical work in the class to identify the collected materials using the identification keys and learn diagnostic characters of plant taxa.
This course is accredited by the University of Tromsø as amounting 5 ECTS. Course code Bio-3024/8024. See previous course description at the UiT pages here. Please be aware that the course will run as a botany course, no entomology option is given this year. UiT webpages are not yet updated for the autumn 2021 semester.
Instructors: Andy Sortland andy.sortland@uit.no and Galina Gussarova galina.gusarova@uit.no.
Required previous knowledge/course-specific requirements: The course is primarily intended for PhD students and post-docs. However, it is also open for Master students and non-students.
Assessment: Performance during the practical parts of the course and a practical exam (pass/or fail), which will be arranged on the last day of the course. The exam will consist of identification of specimens using keys and documenting the distinct morphological characters of the specimens that are used to classify it to taxa at different taxonomic levels.
Registration: Please fill in the online application here
Find out about how to become a ForBio member here.
The maximum number of participants is 15.
The application deadline is June 7, 2021.
Results announced by e-mail 14 June 2021.
Contact Galina Gusarova (galina.gusarova@uit.no) for more information