iBOL » Germany

iBOL partner makes fruit fly discovery

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:13:42 +0000

Barcodes identify pest in southern Germany

German researchers working with the International Barcode of Life project (iBOL) have produced the first genetic evidence that an invasive and highly destructive fruit fly is now present in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg.

Researchers from the Bavarian State Collection in Munich used DNA barcoding to identify the spotted-wing Drosophila, Drosophila suzukii, native to East Asia but now a widespread and costly pest in North America and, more recently, in southern Europe. It causes massive damage to soft fruit and berry crops and can also infest vineyards.

Click photo to enlarge

Fly expert Dieter Doczkal, who found the specimen near Rastatt in Baden-Württemberg last fall, was collecting insects for the Barcoding Fauna Bavarica (BFB) project, an important collaborator of the International Barcoding of Life project (iBOL). iBOL is a global partnership of researchers dedicated to building a DNA barcode reference library for 500,000 animal, plant and fungal species by 2015, focusing on species of particular environmental and socio-economic significance.

Among the important applications of DNA barcode technology is the ability to make rapid and accurate identifications of invasive species with the potential to inflict huge losses on agriculture and forestry industries.

The results have been reported to the plant protection service in Baden-Württemberg and the Julius-Kühn Institute (for national and international plant health relations), which also found spotted wing Drosophila at three sites in southern Germany last fall.

Back to Barcode Bulletin Index

Major expansion planned for German node

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:59:42 +0000

High throughput facility at Bonn museum

A high throughput DNA barcoding facility will be established in the molecular laboratory of Bonn’s Alexander Koenig Zoological Research Museum as part of a major expansion of barcoding activities by iBOL’s German node.

A €5 million grant over 3.5 years from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), has catalyzed the creation of the German Barcode of Life (GBOL) network, which is now moving ahead on a wide-ranging strategy to expand laboratory and informatics infrastructure, accumulate barcode data sets, and build the image, voucher and molecular collections required for a comprehensive online species identification system for Germany’s biodiversity.

GBOL is a consortium of natural history museums and other research institutions that have agreed to provide their taxonomic expertise and existing infrastructure (e.g. dry and wet collections, frozen tissue and DNA collections, databases and laboratories) to barcode the German biodiversity inventory.

GBOL partners are assigned to subprojects according to their taxonomic expertise. Institutions involved in GBOL are:

ZOOLOGY

BOTANY & MYCOLOGY

SOIL ORGANISMS

The institutions will cooperate towards maximum coverage of groups – in both species and specimen numbers – from fresh samples and museum collections. They will also establish a national network of professional taxonomists and qualified volunteers to collect and identify specimens. The molecular laboratory of the ZFMK will establish a “barcode factory” to enhance specimen throughput and efficiency.

The GBOL partners will undertake a number of test projects with industrial users of species information, where accurate and efficient identifications have important economic and ecological implications (e.g. water quality control, control of pest species in agriculture and forestry, fisheries and environmental sampling).

Click image to enlarge

A GBOL web portal has been launched to facilitate internal coordination and targeted collecting, support networking and share barcode data generated in Germany with the international community. GBOL data will also flow into Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) and GBIF.

This spring, citizen scientists with extensive knowledge of varied species will be invited to join professional researchers at regional workshops where they will learn standardized protocols for collecting and preserving specimens and submitting them for barcode analysis. Citizen scientists have a long tradition of solid taxonomic and faunistic work in Germany, and many groups would be difficult to tackle without their help.

(Adapted from an article in ECBOL Newsletter – Issue 5)

Back to Barcode Bulletin Index

DNA barcode confirms harmful pest has landed in Germany

john.chenery — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:11:52 +0000

iBOL collaborator identifies insect invader

Click photo to enlarge

- Media Release (in German)

Germany

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:22:14 +0000

National Node

Node Goals

Establishing Germany as European core nation in the support of iBOL

Germany has a strong tradition of major global-scale collections and taxonomic research, especially in entomology which plays a key role in iBOL. Thus Germany may provide a major contribution to iBOL by bringing into the project expertise and large numbers of vouchers. These competence centres will take profit from the molecular data for spin-off research projects. Germany is ready to build up networks and major facilities for DNA barcoding and related research in both zoology and botany by:
1. Showing up exemplary ways and strategies for European countries to make a major contribution to iBOL and the construction of global DNA libraries.
2. Motivation and mobilization of partners for iBOL in Germany and neighbouring countries.
3. Fund-raising, application for DNA barcoding programmes and projects, lobbying and informing decision-makers in funding agencies and ministries.
4. Building up large-scale ‘Biodiversity Sequencing Centres’ (‘Biodiversatrons’) with high-throughput sequencing facilities for DNA barcoding (Bonn: Zoology, Berlin: Botany)
5. Establishing ‘Competence Centres for Biodiversity Genomics’ which (a) provide, strengthen and teach taxonomical expertise, (b) trace, provide, curate and analyze suitable collection material for the construction of global DNA libraries and (c) perform spin-off research, e.g. in Biodiversity research, phylogeny, DNA-taxonomy, ecology, evolutionary biology (Munich with focus on Entomology, Fauna of Europe)
6. Supporting research projects for generating data (e.g. lead of iBOL Lepidoptera), improving and innovating the techniques (e.g. ABA) and spin-off research projects from generated iBOL data (e.g. Fauna Bavarica)
7. Establishing a BOLD-mirror in Germany
8. DNA Bank facilities for long-term-storage of DNA aliquots, extractions and tissues
9. Capacity building and training

- Activities

- Organization

- Funding Plan

- Core Facilities

- Projects and Researchers