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Building up the Great Lakes fauna inventory and DNA barcode library
Citation:
Barge, J., A. Trebitz, M. Sykes, C. Hatzenbuhler, AND E. Pilgrim. Building up the Great Lakes fauna inventory and DNA barcode library. International Association for Great Lakes Research, Brockport, NY, June 10 - 14, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Having a comprehensive inventory of aquatic fauna inhabiting the Great Lakes would bring together many currently scattered sources of information, while having a comprehensive suite of Great-Lakes genetic barcodes would greatly enhance the ability to assign species-level names to unknown or taxonomically mixed samples. This poster describes the efforts by an EPA/ORD team -- with funding support by EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office -- to compile such an inventory via a comprehensive review of published literature and on-line specimen repositories, and to build out the genetic barcode library for a suite of Great Lakes specimens. This work falls under SSWR research area 3.01A-2.1 and contributes to EPA/ORD efforts at advancing bioassessment capability for Great Lakes fauna. EPA/ORD contributions to the barcode library are publicly available through the BOLD internet site, and the fauna inventory will be made publicly available through a collaboration with the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.
Description:
Having available a comprehensive species inventory and supporting genetic barcode library for Great Lakes fauna is important for endeavors such as examining fauna diversity patterns, estimating likely species in an area, and assigning accurate names to collected specimens. This poster describes our progress towards generating a comprehensive and robust Great Lakes aquatic fauna inventory and towards building out Great Lakes specimens in the BOLD genetic barcode library. Our BOLD library contributions span a suite of Great-Lakes collected fish, zooplankton, and benthic invertebrate species, thereby making regionally-relevant DNA barcodes available for many species. Our inventory, developed via an extensive search of literature and internet sources, covers almost 2200 fishes, reptiles and amphibians, zooplankton, and benthic invertebrates, and includes nomenclature information and lake and habitat occurrences, with supporting citations, photographs, and life history links. Our DNA barcode contributions are publicly available via the BOLD website, and our inventory is being packaged into a public searchable database. Together, these resources showcase the biodiversity of the Great Lakes aquatic fauna and assist the research and management community in their biological monitoring efforts.