A common platform for sharing experiences and education of students in the field of forest entomology

Project facts

Project promoter:
University of South Bohemia
Project Number:
CZ07-0090
Target groups
Doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows and researchers
Status:
Completed
Initial project cost:
€31,649
Final project cost:
€18,540
From Norway Grants:
€ 14,785
The project is carried out in:
Czech Republic

Description

The aim of the proposed project is to enhance the cooperation between the partner organizations through exchange of experiences, common field studies and education of post-graduate students in the field of forest entomology and ecology. Both partners, the University of South Bohemia and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences as well as the Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute conduct a long-term research in the respective fields and will benefit from common research and educational activities. The most promising benefits include education of experts from both research staff and Ph.D. students and broadening the spectra of methodological approaches. Last but not least, studying the differences between Central European and Scandinavian populations of insects related to their latitudinal origin and response to globally changing climate will improve our understanding of insect seasonal life cycles and outbreaks.

Summary of project results

The present project enhanced the cooperation between the Czech and Norwegian partners, whose research activities overlapped for more than a decade. One person from eduacation sector staff and two Phd students from the Czech republic visited the Norwegian partner in May and in August 2016. Visiting persons joined in the planned reasearch activities in the partners laboratories and participated both in field and laboratory experiments and gained new experiencies as well as skills in methodological and technical approaches. Furthemore living bark beetles in the logs were collected and transported back to the Czech republic for further experiments. Norwegian partner sent one person from eduacation sector staff and one Phd student to the Czech republic in September. Among others, they joined the comparative experiments focused on the diffrences in life cycles of Central European and Norwegian bark beetle populations. The results of this experiment will be published as a joint scientific article.

Summary of bilateral results

The project was aimed to the cooperation between the Czech and Norwegian partners, whose research activities overlapped for more than a decade. The main motivation for the common project was the possibility to obtain the financial support for mobilities of research staff and Ph.D. students, which, due to fruitful cooperation and high relevancy of achieved results, intensified the need for future collaboration. The first objective was the exchange of Ph.D. students, education sector staff and knowledge of entomology and ecology. Second was the common research focused on the life cycles of forest insects living in temperate zone and the differences among their populations of Central Europe and Scandinavia.The primary goal was successfully achieved by exchanges realized by the members of educational sector staff and exchanges of Ph.D. students. The results of the joint research are also very promissing. We realized two exchanges of education sector staff and four exchanges of Ph.D. students. The team members organized three seminars, where they presented the project, their scientific results and future prospectives. Petr Dolezal and Karl H. Thunnes accepted the invitation to an interview in Norwegian National Radio Broadcast, where the project and its objectives were presented. The project info was placed on the webpage of the Laboratory of applied entomology. Methodological approaches on both sides were unified, which brings a high level of comparability of relevant resullts. The training of young experts in both Czech and Norwegian institutions increased their competences in conducting high quality research.