In a chique room (with a crappy screen) in Impuls building on the campus we had a nice meeting with several interesting presentations and fruitful discussions. 13 participants from WUR, NIOO and FU Berlin were present including our special guest Martin Kaltenpoth, coming from Mainz early in the morning. Georgios Valsamakis and Luis Paniagua came all the way from Berlin, Eddie Griese from Cologne. All three gave an update on their PhD project, as well as Niccolo Bassetti on the Vidi project. Antonio Cusumano talked about his Marie-Curie project on the 'Impact of third trophic-level symbionts on plant-mediated indirect interactions' and Ana Pineda gave an overview on her research on 'Soil microbes in a world of plant-insect interactions'.

Later in the afternoon, Martin gave a seminar at PSG on 'Microbial symbionts for pathogen defense in insects'. For a Friday afternoon quite many people came to listen to Martins' inspiring work on insect symbiosis. With some beers, nachos and pizza in "the Spot' at Orion we closed this nice day before going into the weekend.

Female cabbage whites did a quick job by laying 3 single eggs on one leave within a minute.

Sampling leaf disks below and next to the egg.

On 17-20 January 2017 we had a meeting with the whole Bingo European consortium, very well organized by CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International) in Delemont, Switzerland. We had  fruitful and interesting days incl. a workshop, mid-term meeting with the EU project officer and expert, a network meeting with all PhD students presenting their first results, and nice relaxing moments like snowball fights and cheese fondue in a cottage! Read more about BINGO news here.