From 17 – 21 November 2025, the Dutch graduate school for Production Ecology & Resource Conservation (PE&RC) will host a postgraduate course on concepts and methods for studying chemical communication in the Anthropocene.
The course will consist of lectures, discussions, workshops, poster sessions, group work, and an excursion and will take place in Ede, The Netherlands. For more information, fees, and registration, visit https://www.pe-rc.nl/Chemical_Communication.
Scope
Anthropogenic changes not only affect ecosystems at large, but also interactions within and between species. Almost all species interact with their environment through chemical signals and cues, and chemical communication is the most abundant form of communication in life. Chemical communications take place between individuals of the same species and between different species at different trophic levels, to make decisions on whether to hide or forage, to find a sexual partner, to search for a resource and to avoid a competitor or natural enemy. Chemical communications are therefore crucial in the web of life.
In the postgraduate course Chemical Communications in the Anthropocene, we will focus on how man-made changes to the environment can influence chemical communications within and between microorganisms, plants, herbivores and disease vectors. Since chemical signals and cues often consist of complex mixtures of multiple compounds, and responses to this information often depend on precise ratios of these compounds, chemical information is not only hard to measure but also particularly vulnerable to anthropocentric changes in the environment. We will not only focus on how chemical information can be collected and analyzed, but also on the environmental factors that can affect chemical communications and zoom in on the underlying mechanisms of producing and perceiving chemical information. There will also be two hands-on workshops on how to analyze large datasets in the field of chemical ecology.
Course setup
The course is composed of a poster session, lectures, discussions, workshops, group work and an excursion.
Poster session
Prior to the course, participants submit a poster of their work (following a poster-format, which will be send to the participants). These posters are displayed in the course lecture room throughout the course. On the first evening, we will have a poster carousel session in which all participants briefly present and discuss their poster. The carousel consists of 5 sessions of 15 minutes where 4 or 5 posters are presented simultaneously in each of these 15-minute sessions. Since the posters will be in the room for the entire course, there will be ample time for participants and lecturers to visit individual posters and discuss aspects in more detail.
Lectures and discussions
Days start with two speakers giving a lecture on one of the key course topics, covering both the general theory and applied aspects. After each lecture, a discussion will be convened by 3 participants. The conveners challenge the speaker on the presentation and the background documents that the speaker submitted (which will be available in a dropbox). Of course, the conveners are also responsible for including the entire audience in the discussion, and ensuring a stimulating and fruitful discussion. One will see that the role of conveners is more pronounced and active in some sessions, and less in others.
Workshops
There will be two workshop sessions, one will focus on “volatilomics” with mzMine and R/Metaboanalyst including experimental design, and one on analysing large datasets collected from public databases to gain a deeper understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in olfaction.
Group work
On Monday, subgroups for the group work will be formed. Subgroups start to brainstorm about their project on Monday and Tuesday. On Thursday subgroups will work on the development of a research proposal. Each group will present the results of their group work assignment to all course participants on Friday. The course lecturers and course organisers will be actively involved with the group work assignment. They will be available to the groups as experts in their fields both with respect to grant proposal writing and presentation, as well as the actual topic of the research.
Excursion
On Wednesday afternoon, there will be an excursion to Wageningen Campus to get an overview of the experimental setups and equipment that are used for studying several aspects in the field of chemical communications.
Lecturers
- Meredith Christine Schuman (Workshop) (Department of Chemistry, University of Zürich, Switserland)
- Markus Knaden (Evolutionary Neuroethology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany)
- Jocelyne Vreede (Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
- Jérémie Topin (Workshop) (Chemical Institute, University of Côte d’Azur, France)
- Niels Verhulst (Institute for Parasitology, University of Zürich, Switserland)
- James Blande (Environmental Ecology Research group, University of Eastern Finland)
Organisers
- Astrid Groot (Population & Evolutionary biology, IBED, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
- Alexander Haverkamp (Laboratory of Entomology, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands)
- Nina Fatouros (Biosystematics, Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands)
- Gilian van Duijvendijk (Graduate School PE&RC, The Netherlands)
