The 2011 ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting was held during Feb 13 and 18 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, USA. The theme of this Aquatic Sciences Meeting is “Limnology and Oceanography in a changing world”. Dr. YE Lin, Assistant Professor of Research Group of Systems Ecology and Watershed Ecology at Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB) was invited to present their recent research progress in automated plankton identification in this meeting. 

Automated plankton identification has attracted many aquatic scientists’ interests and concern in recent years because it can reduce taxonomists’ labor intensity and improves the consistency of the taxonomic data. In 2010, Nature published a paper entitled “Time to automate identification” in its Opinion column, appealing for carrying out studies of automated species identification (Vol: 467|9, 154-155).  

The 2011 Aquatic Science Meeting set a special session, named “S64: Instrumentation, software and protocols for semi-automated identification, enumeration, and measurement of plankton-where are we now?”, for scientists to exchange their views and ideas on the latest technologies and models for automated and semi-automated plankton identification. In this session, Dr. Ye made an oral presentation of their novel model entitled “Bayesian probabilistic model for automated zooplankton classification: a novel framework with emphasis on predictive confidence and rapid category aggregation”, and attracted many colleagues’ interests. Dr. Heidi Sosik, director of the Center for Ocean, Seafloor, and Marine Observing Systems (COSMOS), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), interacted with Dr. Ye on some issues concerning with the Bayesian probabilistic model after Ye’s presentation. They both showed interest to cooperate with each other in the region of automated plankton identification.  

The ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting is held every two year by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography and is a widely recognized venue for scientific exchange across all aquatic disciplines. This year, more than 4,000 freshwater and marine scientists from all around the world attended the meeting with 1240 oral presentations and 450 posters. The next ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting will be held in New Orleans in 2013.