What new research can we do with a MILLION Barcode records? Paul De Barro, Stephen Cameron and Chris Hardy CSIRO Entomology Second International Barcode Conference September 2007

Ecogenomics The new view of animal phylogeny K Halanich (2004) Ann Rev Ecol Evol Syst 35: Orders and >100,000 species How do you measure biodiversity and species interactions at this level of complexity? “Ecogenomics”

The idea – use barcodes to... Generate fundamental advances in our understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function (BD-EF). Extend the existing BD-EF paradigm to explore changes in diversity across multiple trophic levels and incorporating realistic levels diversity and complexity - consider the processes of community assembly and changes in species diversity and abundance. Directly link this to the concept of ecosystem resilience. High throughput technology will enable the exploration of this on a scale that involves replication through both space and time. Different patches of ecosystems could be compared over time and an index applied which measures changes in the relative proportions of indigenous and exotic species. Over time this will enable different habitats to be monitored with changes in the number and proportion of different haplotypes providing an index of its health in response to factors such as global climate change and biological invasion. This data can then be used to provide a more rigorous underpinning to our understanding of relative ecosystem vulnerability.

What would the impacts be?  The science: Quantify biodiversity and understand ecosystem processes  The outputs: Produce region-specific biodiversity assessments  Based on rapid & cost-effective genetic measures of the structural and functional biodiversity  The outcomes: The adoption of the ideology and application of transformational genomic technologies as the approach of choice  By: Environmental researchers, managers, and policy and decision- makers  As: A tool of choice for prioritization and resource allocation

What would you do using barcodes? DNA is the world’s best parataxonomist Treat each haplotype as if it were a species – population/species issues ?<2% Measure species presence/absence before and after - environmental shocks Allows reverse ecology – identifying species that are particularly liable to impacts which can be further investigated to discover why as opposed to tracking changes in species whose ecology we know and suspect might indicate something 1234 XXXX XX X XX XX XX X XX XX X X Sp A Sp B

Affymetrix microarray 1,000,000 targets Conventional glass microarray 5,000 targets High throughput gadgetry

Environmental DNA microarrays (Detecting loss of species) Time

Environmental DNA microarrays (Detecting loss of species) Time