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Workplan and aquired skills
The first step of my work was to figure out keywords, such as -cold-water corals and genetic diversity-, to run the most effective search for papers with the necessary data, on the website: Web of Knowledge. Then I had to export the results from the site to an excel file. After selecting the papers, I had to compile all the needed data to excel files. I created a folder for each paper for an easier organization. In all folders there’s the paper, the supplementary information and all the extracted data. I had to transform the data from each paper, according to a template file that the supervisors shared with me. Therefore, all the data is in the same format for further work. It is clear that I focused all my attention on the specific process of the data collection. The previously acquired theoretical and practical knowledge, that I could benefit from are also related to handling big data set and processing the information with different softwares. During my Professional Practice my organization skills improved a lot. I learned that data collection is the primary and one of the most important steps for research. All the new competences I gained during these weeks are linked, as well to the procedure of data analysis and organizing and handling big datasets.
Systematic search
The work started with choosing the right keywords and acquiring the competence to present the most efficient search on the website: Web of Knowledge. The Web of Science or Web of Knowledge is a trusted publisher-independent global citation database. The website provides subscription-based access to many databases for multiple different academic disciplines. For that reason, I was very happy that my supervisors taught me how to register for the site with my university account and where to find the most important information. Furthermore, I gained the skill how to use multiple keywords in one search. And how to export the data and the papers from the website to an excel file.
Selecting papers
After performing the search with the chosen keywords, we had 297 matching articles. Dealing with this many article is a big task. My supervisors enlightened me what the most efficient way could be, to select them. We did a walkthrough of the process and went over a few papers together. After learning, that I must mostly rely on the abstract, the selection was made easier for me. During the selecting procedure I also acquired the knowledge, that in many cases the data needed, can be found in the supplementary information files attached to the paper. If it was still not clear that the given paper contained the necessary data, they showed me what to specifically look for in the articles, without reading the whole (which comes only later during my work).
Data standardization
Data standardization is the process of converting data to a common format to enable the future processing and analysing. Data from disparate sources can be problematic if it isn’t uniform. Therefore, data standardization is crucial for many reasons. Properly understanding the data is a vital starting point. Afterwards, converting that data into a uniform format, with logical and consistent definitions, is the basis of the process. During my Professional Practice I learned many tools useful for this procedure, mainly in Excel.
Excel skills
These days no matter on which profile we’re planning to work, from data analyst to conversation management, having Excel skills have many benefits. Possessing Microsoft Excel skills has become one of the most must-have strengths of our time. It has become so widespread that every scientist uses MS Excel almost every aspect of research. Spending a lot of time in front of the computer working on Excel, improved my skills a lot. Using the ‘Flash Fill’, ‘Filters’ or ‘Conditional Formatting’ can reduce time spent on the analysis and can help optimizing the extraction process. Furthermore, I learned about: ‘Pivot Tables’. These are tables which summarise, and allow to count, sum, and average amongst other calculations according to the data required. Another tool that I acquired is the ‘SUMIF/SUMIFS’. The Microsoft Excel SUMIF/SUMIFS is a way of sorting through data on a spreadsheet efficiently. This handy tool is a function that sum cells that meet specific but multiple criteria. It is used when adjacent cells meet criteria based on dates, text and numbers. Such as ‘COUNTIF/COUNTIFS’. COUNTIFS is a function that counts the number of cells in a range, that meets single or multiple criteria.
Time management
And last but not least, learning time management skills is an essential skill in the professional and everyday world. During this week of my Professional Practice I had to focus on this, since I had a lot of tasks to carry out. Time can help us succeed in our career just as well as it can make us lag behind. During this Professional Practice, while mostly working on my own, I learned how one manages their time, in all areas of life. My organisation and prioritizing skills improved a lot. I felt more efficient and could more things get done. I was quite happy about the progress I made in this field. I definitely wasted less time on my 5-6th week then on the previous ones. I went well prepared to my meeting and my notes were more structurally organized. I could follow the schedule I set for myself. By improving my time management, I had even time for sunsets, which helped lower the stress during a long work day and I could become more focused after the break. Since time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent for example, on the work, I believe it will give a big boost to my future success in life, in any aspects.
Challenges faced
The highlights of working from home: This picture was taken during one of the hardest moments of the procedure of data collection. This particular day I was facing the most challenging article of my project. The data was written in a format I have never seen before. Tables were actually pictures of tables (which means I had to rewrite manually matrixes of 20 by 20 in Excel). GPS coordinates were not present in any sub part of the articles. It was a dark time. One of the joys of working at home is that in these moments of doubts, you can surround yourself with friends/back up, that help you go through these tormenting articles and give you the strength to tackle the next challenge. But after going through a hard task successfully, it always gives more motivation for the rest of the job. After finishing the data collection from this paper, it gave me strength to do 2 more papers that day. And I could learn a lot about publishing a paper properly from this article.
Exploring qGIS
During the 6th week I came across 2 papers about the species: Paramuricea clavate. The red gorgonian is a colonial soft coral in the family Plexauridae. These ecosystem engineers are native to the eastern Atlantic Ocean, and western Mediterranean Sea. In these regions, the red gorgonian Paramuricea is one of the most important habitat-forming cnidarian species, highlighting their conservation value. P. clavata is impacted by several local and global disturbances, including mass mortality events. I’ve learned that the high pressure of trawling activities could threaten these populations of large and old colonies. One of the articles, that I found very interesting was: “Postglacial range expansion shaped the spatial genetic structure in a marine habitat‐forming species: Implications for conservation plans in the Eastern Adriatic Sea” from Jean-Baptiste Ledoux and his colleagues. The aim of the papers is to understand how historical and contemporary processes shaped spatial patterns of genetic diversity. They characterized the pattern of neutral genetic diversity and inferred underlying processes. Addressing the process of range expansion, which have been occurring in the evolutionary history, leading to significantly imprint contemporary patterns of genetic diversity with direct implications for biodiversity conservation.
Looking at the map in the article, I realized that one tool that every conversation biologist needs to have for a successful career is GIS. Thus, during the last weeks, I tried to push the data analysis a bit further by learning how to convert the excel file into a CSV file in order to upload it as a data frame in qGIS. I used data from some of the papers, including the before-mentioned. After uploading several shapefiles with the administrative region of the different countries surrounding my dataset, I tried to add some bathymetry, to add some context to the map. QGIS is a very interesting software that I wish to discover more. I am quite excited to discover all the possibilities that this software can offer. This skill will be very useful for my thesis and for my future employment prospects.
Working in the deep
The opportunity to work with deep-water corals, made me realise how important these reef-building organisms are, even in the deep. Cold-water coral reefs support an extremely high diversity of marine ecosystems, playing a very important role in structuring and maintaining them. The deep sea is more sensitive to human impacts and even to natural disturbances, as researchers previously thought. Pressure on deep-sea ecosystems continues to increase due to anthropogenic activities reaching into ever deeper waters. Recently, reef-building Anthozoa populations have been decreasing by various, mostly anthropogenic disturbances. Consequently, around many cold-water coral sites marine protected areas (MPAs) have been already established to stop the extraction of marine resources. However, MPAs provide no protection against climate change induced threats, such as ocean warming, acidification and deoxygenation. Thus, to mitigate impacts on vulnerable habitats, various conservation measures are expected. To assess the vulnerability to future global change, there is an urging need to understand their sensitivity to changing environmental conditions. After reading many papers regarding this topic and working with the genetic data of cold-water corals I can imagine myself working for more efficient ways of conservation and management to maintain these ecosystems.
