The Barcode Blog

A mostly scientific blog about short DNA sequences for species identification and discovery. I encourage your commentary. -- Mark Stoeckle

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DNA barcoding identifies invasive pests, appears ready for agricultural application

Pest and invasive species in agricultural crops and shipped goods pose enormous economic and biosecurity threats. Rapidly and reliably identifying pests and invasives in all life stages is likely to be one of the most economically important applications of DNA barcoding. In March 2006 Ann Entomol Soc Am 99: 204 Scheffer, Lewis, and Joshi from the USDA and the Philippine Department of Agriculture apply DNA barcoding to invasive leafminer flies in the Philippines. Liriomyza sativae pupae photo by Whitney CranshawThey analyzed 258 specimens from the Philippines and compared these to a database of 307 sequences previously collected from worldwide populations. Bootstrap values for all species were 100%. In addition, a total of 7 distinct clusters with 98-100% bootstrap support were found in 3 “morphospecies”, suggesting discovery of new species, similar to findings of unrecognized biodiversity in all DNA barcode surveys to date. They conclude “DNA barcoding of economically and medically important species offers a powerful means of rapid identification”. 

 

With DNA barcoding, all can identify this Liriomyza sativae pupae

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 8:44 pm and is filed under General, Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “DNA barcoding identifies invasive pests, appears ready for agricultural application”

  1. Setting the bar at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog Says:

    […] And here’s another fun blog which the one mentioned in the previous post alerted me too. “The Barcode Blog” is “about short DNA sequences for species identification and discovery.” It’s been going for a couple of years but a quick search revealed only one agriculture-related posting, which had to do with the use of barcoding to identify pests and invasives. But I suspect that will change. […]

Contact: mark.stoeckle@rockefeller.edu

About this site

This web site is an outgrowth of the Taxonomy, DNA, and Barcode of Life meeting held at Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, September 9-12, 2003. It is designed and managed by Mark Stoeckle, Perrin Meyer, and Jason Yung at the Program for the Human Environment (PHE) at The Rockefeller University.

About the Program for the Human Environment

The involvement of the Program for the Human Environment in DNA barcoding dates to Jesse Ausubel's attendance in February 2002 at a conference in Nova Scotia organized by the Canadian Center for Marine Biodiversity. At the conference, Paul Hebert presented for the first time his concept of large-scale DNA barcoding for species identification. Impressed by the potential for this technology to address difficult challenges in the Census of Marine Life, Jesse agreed with Paul on encouraging a conference to explore the contribution taxonomy and DNA could make to the Census as well as other large-scale terrestrial efforts. In his capacity as a Program Director of the Sloan Foundation, Jesse turned to the Banbury Conference Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, whose leader Jan Witkowski prepared a strong proposal to explore both the scientific reliability of barcoding and the processes that might bring it to broad application. Concurrently, PHE researcher Mark Stoeckle began to work with the Hebert lab on analytic studies of barcoding in birds. Our involvement in barcoding now takes 3 forms: assisting the organizational development of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life and the Barcode of Life Initiative; contributing to the scientific development of the field, especially by studies in birds, and contributing to public understanding of the science and technology of barcoding and its applications through improved visualization techniques and preparation of brochures and other broadly accessible means, including this website. While the Sloan Foundation continues to support CBOL through a grant to the Smithsonian Institution, it does not provide financial support for barcoding research itself or support to the PHE for its research in this field.