Community Portal

Welcome to the community portal. During the 3rd Jellyfish Blooms conference in Mar del Plata, 14-16 July 2010, an initiative began to increase coordination of research across the community. The goal is to rapidly collect data to answer major questions about or involving jellyfish. Below is an incomplete shortlist of areas considered for priority initiatives. Please add additional initiatives or comment on existing initiatives, add your name to express interest in contributing to one or more of initiatives. As the ideas coalesce, we will begin to convert the list into one or more grant proposals with broad community involvement.

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Phylogeny Coordinate efforts among multiple labs to sequence the same loci from as many species as possible in Scyphozoa (resampling geographically and temporally to detect cryptic species).

Ecology Shortlist of environmental and biological variables to describe in as many populations as possible to answer questions of which jellyfish 'outbreak' in what circumstances.

Evolutionary Ecology - Regional labs sequence 3 specimens per species per location sent by ecologists working in field.

the proposal might promote new ecological and taxonomic studies globally in a way that supports each person's research interests, promotes collective goals, and builds on existing initiatives; products could include training, building out databases, establishing a jellyfish society, etc. Regarding personnel - the address list for this message is an ad hoc mix of NCEAS workshop & 3rd symposium participants and is incomplete - the project should be as inclusive as possible while being sensitive to budget constraints. (If funded, this project should precipitate further funding, for example, NSF has grants that potentially could support participation of tens of US students in the next couple of Jellyfish Blooms Symposia - which frees up other resources to be directed to support students from other countries).