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

Subscribe to this blog

Sign up for email notifications

«
»

Mapping biodiversity with DNA: sectors analyzed so far

As of 28 january 2008, there are 341,825 barcode records from 35,798 species in the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD) www.barcodinglife.org . What sectors of biodiversity have been analyzed so far? Here I follow the daily updated pages publicly available through “DNA Taxonomy Browser” link on BOLD home page. One can click downward through the taxonomic hierarchy from phyla to species, with a cogent summary at each level showing barcode records so far, contributing institutions and countries, and collection locations. The summary map shows remarkably good coverage of most terrestrial and coastal regions, and representation of nearly all countries. The open oceans are sparsely sampled so far, and remain an exciting terra incognita for biological exploration, including with DNA barcoding.  The global totals of 342K records/36K species work out to about 10 barcodes/species, and the average number of barcodes/species is similar at least down to the class level for most groups I looked at, suggesting a target of roughly 10 specimens per species is being achieved. 

The densest records so far are from Phylum Arthropoda (244,297), particularly insects (230,838), and of these mostly Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) (169,145); and Phylum Chordata (74,720), particularly mammals (27,186), fish (26,752), and birds (12,770). There is broad sampling of other groups, including records from 376 animal orders in 80 classes representing 25 phyla. In addition, there are a few thousand records from fungi (3 phyla, 8 classes) plants (mostly red algae; 3 phyla, 8 classes), and protists (7 phyla, 11 classes), the latter of which DNA barcoding is likely to reveal as an enormous, deeply diverse group. 

The first paper proposing DNA barcoding was published in February 2003. The results displayed today on BOLD Taxonomy Browser demonstrate amazing progress in a short time, thanks to the inspiration and hard work of many! 

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Mapping biodiversity with DNA: sectors analyzed so far”

  1. Brian Teasdale Says:
    February 6th, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    Although photosynthetic, red algae are not actually plants and usually (although sometimes unwillingly) placed in the Protista.

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.