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Plans and progress for building a Great Lakes fauna DNA barcode reference library
Citation:
Barge, J., C. Hatzenbuhler, J. Hoffman, Greg Peterson, E. Pilgrim, AND A. Trebitz. Plans and progress for building a Great Lakes fauna DNA barcode reference library. St. Louis River Estuary summit, Superior, WI, March 14 - 15, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
The poster will present an overview of EPA-MED’s efforts for DNA library building for invertebrate and fish species within the great lakes, as well as go over information that is currently in the BOLD (Barcode of Life) database.
Description:
DNA reference libraries provide researchers with an important tool for assessing regional biodiversity by allowing unknown genetic sequences to be assigned identities, while also providing a means for taxonomists to validate identifications. Expanding the representation of Great Lakes species in such reference libraries is an explicit component of research at EPA’s Mid-Continent Ecology Division. Our DNA reference library building efforts began in 2012 with the goal of providing barcodes for at least 5 specimens of each native and nonindigenous fish and aquatic invertebrate species currently present in the Great Lakes. The approach is to pull taxonomically validated specimen for sequencing from EPA led sampling efforts of adult/juvenile fish, larval fish, benthic macroinvertebrates, and zooplankton; while also soliciting aid from state and federal agencies for tissue from “shopping list” organisms. The barcodes we generate are made available through the publicly accessible BOLD (Barcode of Life) database, and help inform a planned Great Lakes biodiversity inventory. To date, our submissions to BOLD are limited to fishes; of the 88 fish species listed as being present within Lake Superior, roughly half were successfully barcoded, while only 22 species met the desired quota of 5 barcoded specimens per species. As we continue to generate genomic information from our collections and the taxonomic representations become more complete, we will continue to make this information publicly available to improve the scientific understanding of Great Lakes invertebrates and fish species.