Capacity building

Research Infrastructure

In our previous institutional partnership, financed by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2006-2010), we invested in the establishment of a molecular laboratory at ISU. Since then,  the lab has hosted many projects dealing with species conservation and biodiversity. Building upon these earlier efforts, we have improved the infrastructure for field work, collections and collection-based work which is a prequisite for any biodiversity research.

Current activities:

* barcoding, to initiate a barcode catalog of selected groups of species
* establishing an interactive database that mirrors the functions of the German
Barcode of Life data base
* field trips and training with new equipment
* stereo microscopy
* collection curation and related infrastructure

Training and networking

Our training and networking efforts are always grounded in biodiversity research, with the explicit goal of producing joint scientific communications and information sharing:

• Georgian Bachelor and Master students have received training in fieldwork methods
• We conducted a Bioblitz in 2018, a concentrated collection effort which provided unique opportunities for Georgian and German teams to jointly perform field work and collection-based biodiversity research with  Georgian students.
• Georgian students and young scientists can receive advanced education and training in Bonn at the ZFMK.
• Training covers essential aspects of biodiversity research– data basing, taxonomy, molecular systematics, barcoding and collection management.