2010 Toyota Enviro Outreach: “Making every species count”
The wealth of South Africa’s biodiversity is vital to human well-being and planetary health, yet despite the value of this biodiversity, we have yet to catalog most species. For instance, 50 000 species of insects have been recorded in South Africa, but an estimated additional 50 000 species have not yet been described. In an attempt to bridge this gap, the Toyota Enviro Outreach Team (under the expert guidance of Gerhard and Elmarie Groenewald from Klipbokkop Mountain Reserve) together with scientists and students (from the University of Johannesburg, University of Guelph, Canada, Cape Nature and SANPARKS) will mark the International Year of Biodiversity with a three-week expedition to collect plant and animal specimens for DNA barcoding. Our project, which aims to safeguard our natural wealth and reduce biodiversity loss, is part of an international effort, led by a team of Canadian scientists, to DNA barcode all life on earth: the biggest biodiversity genomics initiative ever undertaken.
DNA barcoding utilizes sequence diversity in a standardized gene region to identify species and discover new ones. Because this technique works on minute amounts of tissue it can even be used on fragments of plant and animal material that would be difficult to identify using traditional morphological methods. Although our goal to DNA barode 20 000 specimens from South Africa by April 2011 (and a further 40 000 by April 2013) is huge, the benefits will be enormous. Applications include identifying the illegal trade of endangered species, controlling pests and vectors of disease, identifying invasive and poisonous organisms, as well as fragmentary material in forensic investigations. However, the main application will be to assess species diversity in the world’s biodiversity hotspots where a shortage of specialist skills hampers conservation efforts.
The Toyota Enviro Outreach initiative will start on September 20th at the Klipbokkop Mountain Reserve and will run until October 6th, during which time we will visit three of the 34 global biodiversity hotspots, namely the Succulent Karoo, the Cape Floristic Region and the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany. Our goal is to collect specimens from a broad range of taxa and to produce DNA barcode records for all of them. These specimens and their sequences will become part of the growing reference library of DNA barcodes for South African plants and animals and is intended for use by the broader scientific and amateur naturalist communities. All voucher specimens will be deposited in major national collections where they are accessible for examination and in-depth analyses by all interested researchers. It will also improve our electronic information base on South African biodiversity, and facilitate the expansion of the National Collecting Programme. Future plans include the development of a hand-held device that will facilitate rapid field identifications by analyzing any plant or animal specimen and comparing its DNA barcode to a vast reference database.
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