Rockefeller University

Program for the Human Environment

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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Palearctic birds barcoding workshop held in Netherlands

Researchers met at Naturalis, the Natural History Museum of Leiden, Netherlands, on 20-21 April 2006 to form plans for barcoding Palearctic birds. The meeting was convened by Per Ericson, Naturalis ABBI Palearctic Regional Chair, Swedish Museum of Natural History, hosted by Rene Dekker, Naturalis, and included representatives from Canada, Denmark, England, France, Iran, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States. Additional participants in Palearctic ABBI are welcome–please contact Per Ericson per.ericson@nrm.se.

Discussion topics included sampling strategies based on geographical patterns in Palearctic avian diversity, updating the ABBI compilation of existing avian tissue specimens, using ongoing collecting and ringing operations as additional sources for un- or under-sampled species, cost-effectiveness of DNA sequence recovery from museum skins, facilitation of regional network activities with Barcode of Life Database (BOLD), need for email, website, and/or listserve to monitor progress and plan next steps, potential small and large-scale funding sources including possible low or no-cost sequencing at pre-existing genomic centers, and exciting early results with 600+ COI barcodes from eastern Palearctic birds.  Based on this workshop, the Palearctic group expects much progress over the coming year.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 at 8:03 pm and is filed under AllBirds, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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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.