What are the Silica Sessions?
Andy Warhol, world famous American visual artist, is supposed to have said “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Here’s the chance! The Silica Sessions aim to be an open discussion series to debate important topics related to diatoms. Anyone with a topic to share should get in touch with David Williams, to be put onto the list.
Every three months a topic is raised and shared about the community in this Zoom session:
Meeting ID: 674 8665 5151
Passcode: 637865
The first Silica Session
On September 27th at 14h UK Time we had the first Silica Session. We acknowledge technical problems, as the link shared through the membership mailing list was not correct. However, 75 diatomists from around the world met up to discuss David Williams’ topic: Why IMRaD (Introduction-Materials and Methods- Results and Discussion) is an unsuitable format for taxonomic publications. The discussion was lively, although for the next time we attempt to make it more accessible for Early Career Researchers.
Next Silica Sessions
The next Silica Sessions are planned for December 6th, 15-16 Central European Time. Subject The poverty of molecular monophyly: Campylodiscus as an example. David Williams will start the discussion. Join us!
Systematics, taxonomy, phylogenetics all refer to the same thing: how do we classify organisms? It is generally agreed that monophyletic groups are those we are seeking, those are the groups we will name. Molecular data have overwhelmingly become the data of choice in diatom systematics as it has elsewhere. And yet … some groups so recognised (named) lack support from actual data, from real characters. So: we have taxon names for entities that have no characters.
Meeting ID: 674 8665 5151
Passcode: 637865
Videos from the last meeting
06.12.2023
(will be added after the meeting)