Opwall recently hosted it’s second annual Optoberfest scientific mini-conference! Optoberfest gives us a chance to showcase some of the amazing science stories and research results from our global network of field sites, and for you to ask our speaking panel of international scientists questions about their work. Save the date for the next Optoberfest: 8 & 9 October 2026.

Dr Tom Martin

30 years of biodiversity research – an overview and celebration of Operation Wallacea’s achievements over the last three decades

Tom is the head of research at Operation Wallacea, with an involvement with Opwalls research program stretching back nearly 20 years! Tom will introduce the Optoberfest Science mini-conference, provide a summary of research achievements across our various sites over the last 12 months, and discuss key objectives for the coming year.

Will Dawson

Noisy Eaters! Building belowground invertebrate trophic networks using ecoacoustics and metagenomics for soil health monitoring

Monitoring soil invertebrate trophic networks remains difficult despite its importance for assessing ecosystem resilience. Ecoacoustics is increasingly used to monitor soil invertebrate communities and interactions but poorly resolves species’ identities. Molecular methods such as DNA metabarcoding can accurately identify species but lack context. Integrating the contextual information from ecoacoustics with taxonomic resolution from metabarcoding could enable accurate and streamlined monitoring of soil trophic networks. This presentation will outline the importance of soil biodiversity, trophic networks, and how we plan to use integrated biomonitoring methods to assess soil health. These principles will be demonstrated in the context of Will’s ongoing PhD and how they can be applied to wider research, including Operation Wallacea.

Hrvoje Cizmek

Biodiversity research in the Adratic ecosystems of Silba Island

Hrvoje Čižmek is the founder and lead researcher of the Marine Explorers Society 20,000 Leagues, with over 20 years of underwater research in the Adriatic Sea. He played a leading role in developing Croatia’s Natura 2000 marine habitat protocols and is completing his PhD in Oceanography at the University of Zagreb. His research, documented through publications and conference contributions, focusses on benthic community ecology, seagrass habitats, and marine protected areas. He is also at the forefront of Croatia’s first co-management of a marine protected area (MPA) and is actively advocating for the proclamation of the Silba Reefs as a special marine reserve. Over his career, he has managed more than 50 national and international research and educational projects, establishing himself as both a leading marine scientist and a driver of innovative conservation policy. In his upcoming talk, he will present results from collaborative research with OpWall students on noble pen shells, sea urchins, and seagrass, as well as outline future research on MPA management and biodiversity restoration monitoring following the establishment of a no-take zone around the Silba Reefs.

Darius Rose

Metabarcoding as a tool to examine dietary niche partitioning in the herbivorous mammals of Gondwana Game Reserve

South African game reserves typically support a large and diverse range of herbivores that perform different dietary functions. As part of his MSc project at the University of Guelph, Darius examined this leads to niche partitioning In the Gondwana Game Reserve, Western Cape. His project analysed dung samples using metabarcoding methodologies to investigate whether dietary niche partitioning occurred among 12 large-bodied herbivore species during the winter of 2023. Three research questions were examined: 1) Does dietary niche partitioning facilitate coexistence between large herbivores? 2) Does body size play a role in the dietary diversity of large herbivores? 3) Does dietary niche partitioning occur between closely related species in the same family? In this talk, Darius will discuss the answers to these questions, as well as how these outcomes compare to results found in other managed South African Game Reserves.

Dr Sam Jones

Testing the mechanisms of elevational range limitation in Central American cloud forest songbirds

Dr Rowan Watt-Pringle

Navigating real-world difficulties in research

Rowan is a tropical coral reef ecologist currently based in Bordeaux, with practical experience in the Indo-Pacific, Southwest Indian Ocean, and Caribbean over the past 13 years. He has also spent many years as a reef ecology trainer, including on Opwall expeditions in South Africa, Cuba, Honduras, and Indonesia. In 2024 he completed a PhD through Hasanuddin University in Makassar, Indonesia, the original focus of which was on testing the resilience of nursery-reared and outplanted branching corals at different light levels. In this talk, Rowan will discuss potential unforeseen difficulties that researchers may need to overcome in the field, with specific reference to the changes that needed to be made to his PhD work following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2020. This will include how he tackled the problem of having to evacuate the research site mid-installation of experimental restoration areas, and the adjustments that were needed to ensure that he could meet the requirements of the PhD and extract publishable data from the project.

Dr Brogan Pett

Megadiverse Madagascar: insights into the spider community of Mariarano dry forest

Brogan is a biogeographer and arachnologist at the University of Iceland. Brogan runs the spider workgroup of BINCO (Biodiversity Inventory for Conservation: www.binco.eu) focussing on discovering and cataloguing tropical spider diversity. Our flagship collaborative project is at the Mariarano field site in northwestern Madagascar, dry deciduous forest of roughly 5,000ha interspersed with low intensity agriculture and human settlements. BINCO and Opwall have been working on entomology projects here together since around 2016. Brogan got involved in 2017 and has now completed four seasons at the site. The talk will focus on taxonomic work completed to date, give a brief run through of the > 100 new species to science known from the site (including the seven published to date) and the development of a new standardised community ecology protocol. Overall, the spider project focusses on understanding community structure, diversity patterns and functional and taxonomic diversity. 

Dr José António L. Barão-Nóbrega

Fantastic Beasts: A voyage through the world of Crocodiles, Aguadas & Calakmul

The presentation blends scientific knowledge with conservation stories from the point of view of someone with an unexplainable fondness for crocodilians, swamps and tropical forests. This voyage covers a brief introduction to the world of crocodilians, insights from personal research experience with freshwater habitats and their Crocodiles in Calakmul and the Yucatan Peninsula, how Opwall played a key role in forging an international collaboration for Crocodile Research and Management for Conservation (CRMC; https://www.crocodileresearch.com/) and some highlights from CRMC work and research projects thus far.

Mădălina Marian

Socio-economic incentives to preserve the last medieval agricultural landscape in Europe

Mădălina Marian is part of the ADEPT Transylvania team and the manager of the Angofa Wildlife Centre. For the past 20 years, ADEPT has been dedicated to preserving the last medieval landscape of Europe, a place of extraordinary biodiversity, rare species, and traditional farming practices that have shaped its unique mosaic of rich habitats. ADEPT has been collaborating with Operation Wallacea for much of this period, with the first Opwall group going to Transylvania in 2009. In her presentation, Mădălina will share the story of ADEPT’s work—highlighting key achievements, lessons learned along the way, and the best approaches to building meaningful collaborations with local communities.

Dr Jon Chamberlain

Scalable Solutions for Monitoring Marine Ecosystems

Dr. Jon Chamberlain is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Marine Technology Research Unit at the University of Essex, UK. With a background in marine science and technology, he specialises in developing automated, scalable solutions for ecosystem monitoring. His current research integrates deep learning and 3D photogrammetry to assess changes in benthic habitats. In this talk Jon will examine improved methods for monitoring marine ecosystems. Marine ecosystems are experiencing rapid change due to climate change, habitat loss, and other human impacts. Monitoring these changes is essential for protecting biodiversity, but traditional methods are often time-consuming, expensive, and limited in scale. This talk presents automated and scalable technologies to improve how we monitor and understand ecosystem change in the marine environment. Two key approaches will be presented: (1) deep learning algorithms for classifying underwater imagery and detecting changes in coral, algae, and sponge coverage; (2) high-resolution 3D modelling and photogrammetry to measure reef structural complexity over time. The methods are being applied to marine monitoring in the Wakatobi Marine Reserve around Hoga Island in Indonesia, a site with long-term ecological data collected in collaboration with UNHAS. By combining science, technology, and innovation, this talk offers a vision for the future of marine conservation, empowering researchers and decision-makers with the tools they need to protect the ocean in a rapidly changing world.

Opwall Jobs

Interested in following in the footsteps of our speakers and working on one of our summer expeditions? Each year we have a huge number of field staff that come and join us at our projects across the globe, from lecturers to survey leaders. All of our seasonal roles are advertised on our jobs page and applications usually open in January for that year. To apply visit: jobs.opwall.com