The visit of the Corresponding Member of RAS Professor A.A. Kotov to China as part of the Foreign Expert Project 2023 program has ended. The inviting organization was Shanghai Ocean University, the oldest university in China. During the visit A.A. Kotov gave a series of public lectures on various aspects of hydrobiology, as well as a series of lectures for master's and undergraduate students at Shanghai Ocean University. A series of practical exercises were conducted to identify freshwater zooplankton, including those collected during a three-day field trip across the provinces of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. A program of co-supervision by two Chinese master's degree students was initiated.
This visit is the beginning of a cooperation program between the Laboratory of Ecology of Aquatic Communities and Invasions of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Ocean University. In addition to the latter, A.A. Kotov also gave lectures at Fudan University in Shanghai and Nanjin University in Nanjing, with which it is also planned to establish cooperation in subsequent years in the field of studying the phylogeography of freshwater invertebrates and environmental DNA (eDNA).