ONTARIO CHAPTER
MEETINGS / CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS / COURSES &
COMMUNITY EVENTS
MEETINGS / CONFERENCES
65th Canadian Conference For Fisheries Research (January 5-7, 2012) Moncton, NB
2012 AFS-OC Annual General Meeting and Conference (March 01-03, 2012) Woodview, ON
6th World Fisheries Congress (May 07-11, 2012) Edinburgh, Scotland
55th Annual Conference on Great Lakes Research (May 14-18, 2012) Cornwall, ON
1st National Fish and Wildlife Conservation Congress (May 27-31, 2012) Ottawa, ON
2012 Ecological and Evolutionary Ethology of Fishes Meeting (June 17-21, 2012) Windsor, ON
36th Annual Larval Fish Conference (July 2-6, 2012) Bergen, Norway
10th International Congress on the Biology of Fish (July 15-19, 2012) Madison, WI
142nd American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting (August 19-23, 2012) St. Paul, MN
7th International Symposium on Sturgeon (July, 2013) Nanaimo, BC
143rd American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting (September 8-12, 2013) Little Rock, AR
144th American Fisheries Society Annual Meeting (August 15-21, 2014) Quebec City, QC
WORKSHOPS / COURSES
2012 ROM Ontario Fish Identification Workshops
Presentations and hands-on lab exercises will familiarize you with the characteristics that are used in distinguishing families, genera, and species. Exercises will develop your skills of counting, measuring, and examining the pertinent external and internal anatomical structures that are necessary to use keys to Ontario’s fishes. Experienced individuals will be on hand to assist you with exercises, provide advice, and access the specimens housed in the reference collection.
You can design your own program of specimen examination or follow ours. At least 60% of your time will be devoted to exercises, which can be done in any order. A reference collection of all Ontario freshwater fishes of a variety of sizes will be made available so that you can specialize in a group of your choice. Presentations will be provided on the following topics:
Day one: • fish anatomy and identification tools • family identification • field identification of trouts and salmons, pikes, suckers and catfishes
Day two: • minnow identification • computer random access key to Ontario’s minnows
Day three: • field identification of sculpins, sunfishes, darters and perches • optional Quiz
The two-day Species-at-Risk Workshop will focus on the identification of fishes classified as Endangered, Threatened or Special Concern. Groups covered include gars, whitefishes, minnows, suckers, madtoms, darters, and sunfishes. Emphasis will be placed on how to assess the distinguishing characteristics and comparison with similar species. Completion of a 3-day workshop is required for participation in this workshop. Presentations will include information on habitat. Jason Barnucz of Fisheries and Oceans Canada will be a guest instructor for this special workshop.
Three regular and one species at risk workshops have been scheduled:
17-19 April 2012 (regular 3-day workshop)
24-26 April 2012 (regular 3-day workshop)
30 April - 2 May 2012 (regular 3-day workshop)
3-4 May 2012 (2-day fish species at risk workshop)
Place: University of Toronto, Ramsay Wright Building, Room 205, 25 Harbord Street.
Time: All workshops will begin promptly at 9AM and end at 5PM.
For information about course content or matters other than registration, contact:
Erling Holm or Mary Burridge
Department of Natural History (Ichthyology)
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen’s Park
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA M5S 2C6
Telephone: 416 586 5760 (Erling), 416-586-5531 (Mary)
FAX: 416 586 5553
email: workshop-ichthyol@rom.on.ca
Additional Information and Registration Form.
Analysis of Multivariate Data from Ecology and Environmental Science, using PRIMER v6 (30 April - 04 May 2012, The Huntsman Marine Science Centre, St Andrews, New Brunswick)
This five day workshop will cover the statistical analysis of assemblage data (species by samples matrices of abundance, area cover etc) and/or multi-variable environmental data which arise in a wide range of applications in environmental science and ecology, from environmental impact assessments, through fundamental community ecology studies and monitoring of widescale biodiversity change, to biomarker studies and purely physical or chemical analyses.
Based on the PRIMER package v6 (Plymouth Routines In Multivariate Ecological Research), a worldwide standard software tool used in over 7000 SCI-listed papers for analysis of aquatic assemblages and, increasingly, terrestrial, paleontological, microbial and genetic data, also for model output, in ecotoxicology, epidemiology, sociology etc.
The workshop covers definitions of similarity, clustering (CLUSTER), ordination by non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) and principal components (PCA), hypothesis testing on similarity matrices (ANOSIM) and other permutation tests (RELATE), linking biotic patterns to environmental variables (BEST), identifying species explaining community patterns (SIMPER, BEST), comparison of ordinations (2STAGE), dominance curves and (bio)diversity indices, including measures based on species relatedness (DIVERSE, TAXDTEST). Also: the choice between 50+ (dis)similarity measures, including dispersion-weighted coefficients, 'exploratory' permutation tests for a priori unstructured samples (SIMPROF) and optimal biota-environment relationships (including non-metric multivariate regression trees, LINKTREE), tests for dominance curves (DOMDIS), and much else. Also briefly demonstrated will be the PERMANOVA+ add-on to PRIMER6, tackling ANOVA/regression analogues for more complex designs.
The workshop will be led by Prof K R Clarke (PRIMER-E and an honorary fellow of the Plymouth Marine Lab and the Marine Biological Association, UK). Bob Clarke is a researcher in ecological statistics and has worked for many years at PML, where he was responsible for adapting and developing the methods underlying the PRIMER package.
‘Hands-on’ lab sessions will use literature case studies and participants are encouraged to bring along some of their own data. They also need to bring a Windows laptop, for which a valid PRIMER v6 licence exists or is bought at the special workshop price. Sharing a laptop is possible (e.g. between a supervisor and student). The emphasis is on practical application and interpretation, the theoretical aspects of the course (e.g. the multivariate statistics) being carefully selected to be that which is simple to describe and understand. No prior statistical knowledge is assumed.
To register please use the Booking Form.
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Submit workshop/course notices, community events, and/or conference links/announcements to the webmaster.
Last update: 18 January, 2012