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Browsing CLI Publications by Subject "Biodiversity"
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ArticleCharacter-based DNA barcoding allows discrimination of genera, species and populations in Odonata(Royal Society, 2007-11-08) Rach, J. ; DeSalle, Rob ; Sarkar, Indra Neil ; Schierwater, B. ; Hadrys, H.DNA barcoding has become a promising means for identifying organisms of all life stages. Currently, phenetic approaches and tree-building methods have been used to define species boundaries and discover 'cryptic species'. However, a universal threshold of genetic distance values to distinguish taxonomic groups cannot be determined. As an alternative, DNA barcoding approaches can be 'character based', whereby species are identified through the presence or absence of discrete nucleotide substitutions (character states) within a DNA sequence. We demonstrate the potential of character-based DNA barcodes by analysing 833 odonate specimens from 103 localities belonging to 64 species. A total of 54 species and 22 genera could be discriminated reliably through unique combinations of character states within only one mitochondrial gene region (NADH dehydrogenase 1). Character-based DNA barcodes were further successfully established at a population level discriminating seven population-specific entities out of a total of 19 populations belonging to three species. Thus, for the first time, DNA barcodes have been found to identify entities below the species level that may constitute separate conservation units or even species units. Our findings suggest that character-based DNA barcoding can be a rapid and reliable means for (i) the assignment of unknown specimens to a taxonomic group, (ii) the exploration of diagnosability of conservation units, and (iii) complementing taxonomic identification systems.
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ArticleMapping the biosphere : exploring species to understand the origin, organization and sustainability of biodiversity(Taylor & Francis, 2012-03-27) Wheeler, Q. D. ; Knapp, Sandra ; Stevenson, D. W. ; Stevenson, J. ; Blum, Stan D. ; Boom, B.. M. ; Borisy, Gary G. ; Buizer, James L. ; De Carvalho, M. R. ; Cibrian, A. ; Donoghue, M. J. ; Doyle, V. ; Gerson, E. M. ; Graham, C. H. ; Graves, P. ; Graves, Sara J. ; Guralnick, Robert P. ; Hamilton, A. L. ; Hanken, J. ; Law, W. ; Lipscomb, D. L. ; Lovejoy, Thomas E. ; Miller, Holly ; Miller, J. S. ; Naeem, Shahid ; Novacek, M. J. ; Page, L. M. ; Platnick, N. I. ; Porter-Morgan, H. ; Raven, Peter H. ; Solis, M. A. ; Valdecasas, A. G. ; Van Der Leeuw, S. ; Vasco, A. ; Vermeulen, N. ; Vogel, J. ; Walls, R. L. ; Wilson, E. O. ; Woolley, J. B.The time is ripe for a comprehensive mission to explore and document Earth's species. This calls for a campaign to educate and inspire the next generation of professional and citizen species explorers, investments in cyber-infrastructure and collections to meet the unique needs of the producers and consumers of taxonomic information, and the formation and coordination of a multi-institutional, international, transdisciplinary community of researchers, scholars and engineers with the shared objective of creating a comprehensive inventory of species and detailed map of the biosphere. We conclude that an ambitious goal to describe 10 million species in less than 50 years is attainable based on the strength of 250 years of progress, worldwide collections, existing experts, technological innovation and collaborative teamwork. Existing digitization projects are overcoming obstacles of the past, facilitating collaboration and mobilizing literature, data, images and specimens through cyber technologies. Charting the biosphere is enormously complex, yet necessary expertise can be found through partnerships with engineers, information scientists, sociologists, ecologists, climate scientists, conservation biologists, industrial project managers and taxon specialists, from agrostologists to zoophytologists. Benefits to society of the proposed mission would be profound, immediate and enduring, from detection of early responses of flora and fauna to climate change to opening access to evolutionary designs for solutions to countless practical problems. The impacts on the biodiversity, environmental and evolutionary sciences would be transformative, from ecosystem models calibrated in detail to comprehensive understanding of the origin and evolution of life over its 3.8 billion year history. The resultant cyber-enabled taxonomy, or cybertaxonomy, would open access to biodiversity data to developing nations, assure access to reliable data about species, and change how scientists and citizens alike access, use and think about biological diversity information.