Author: Samraat Pawar

Dear RCN Members,

As part of the upcoming meeting, we will have a Working group on Vector Traits, with the goal of further improving the VecTraits database, which we are developing as a global resource for functional traits in disease vectors. To get an idea about where we (or at least some of us!) are coming from and how we envisage the role of vector Traits in VBD research, please see this preprint.

We are looking for 2-3 more members, who have experience with collecting, managing, or generally meddling around with vector traits, to join the VecTraits workshop team. If you are interested, please email me (s.pawar@imperial.ac.uk).

Exciting times ahead!

Best wishes

Samraat

Hello folks,

Looking forward to seeing many of you at VectorBiTE 2018.

Matt Watts has made great progress with VecDyn – please visit vectorbyte.org. We will be integrating VecDyn into the training in this meeting.

The new Ecoinformatics Working Group for VBite 2018 will focus on VecTraits, though we will also have some discussions about VecDyn and how to develop it further. Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks,

Samraat

The Ecoinformatics working group has been set up. If you are a VectorBiTE member and interested in joining this group, please go ahead! We are currently working on a draft data sheet template for VecDyn, which we will then make available for VectorBiTE members to give feedback on. Then, after a revision or two, we should be ready to start assembling vector presence-absence and abundance data.

VecTrait will follow soon after.