Human destabilization of climate with its current and future costs and suffering make headlines daily. Related yet to some extent independent, the most current mass extinction—the seventh¹ event of its kind in the nearly four billion years since life appeared on Earth—with potentially greater adverse impacts² receives severalfold less attention³. We began the Silicon Valley Barcode of Life to further iBOL’s work to address this imbalance.

We’ve observed firsthand how humans are diminishing biodiversity. As property owners in our community have covered more land with buildings and paving, they’ve reduced and fragmented habitat⁴. Songbirds like the hooded oriole (Icterus cucullatus) and cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum), once common visitors to our yard, now come rarely if at all. As we and those around us have relied increasingly upon products imported from around the world, we’ve introduced pests and invasive species that disrupt long-standing ecological relationships⁵. Oak Sudden Death, caused by a water mold (Phytophthora ramorum) thought to have entered the United States via the nursery plant trade, has killed tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) and coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) in some of our favorite hiking spots and far beyond.

Taxonomic distribution of biodiversity collected at Hidden Villa DNA Barcoding Bioblitz, June 2018. Colors in the heat tree indicate the number of samples detected.

IMAGE CREDIT: Hilary Bayer

To date we’ve actively engaged more than a hundred volunteers, directly addressed more than a thousand people in-person (pre-pandemic) and subsequent online events, and indirectly addressed several thousands more in published writing and through our website. We’ve also hand-collected 600 specimens from diverse ecosystems in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, and collected nearly 30,000 additional specimens from Malaise traps deployed in partnership with Stanford University’s Fukami Lab, the City of Palo Alto, and Hidden Villa Organic Farm and Wilderness Center.

In 2021 we were offered an opportunity to partner with the Mono Lake Committee to study arthropods of the Mono Basin. Though Mono Lake is several hundred miles across California from the Silicon Valley, we’ve vacationed in the Sierra Nevada with our family for as long as we can remember, and we’re grateful to be able to contribute to protecting its biodiversity.

In our first round of collections, we gathered 250 unique specimens within a 50-mile radius of Mono Lake by hand. With pit traps and a Malaise trap on Mono Lake Committee properties, including the Outdoor Education Center visited by hundreds of students annually, we gathered about 4,000 additional specimens.

In 2022 we’re continuing to catalog arthropods of Silicon Valley and of the Mono Basin. In both places we have plans to deploy additional Malaise traps in partnership with local conservation and educational organizations and proceed with hand collection, engaging volunteers in these activities and in specimen processing.

We’re demonstrating how DNA barcoding can be a means to quickly and cost-effectively catalog biodiversity and thereby contribute to global and local libraries of life—a resource on which many can rely to inform science-based stewardship and enrich educational programs.

We gratefully acknowledge the Consulate of Canada in San Diego for kindly supporting us in facilitating this partnership with the International Barcode of Life Consortium, and the staff at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics for the ways they’ve assisted us in learning and contributing.

References:

1. Michael R. Rampino & Shu-Zhong Shen (2019): The end-Guadalupian (259.8 Ma) biodiversity crisis: the sixth major mass extinction? Historical Biology 33(1):1-7. DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2019.1658096

2. Cardinale BJ et al (2012) Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature 486(7401):59-67. DOI: 10.1038/nature11148.

3. Legagneux1 P et al (2018) Our house is burning: Discrepancy in climate change vs. biodiversity coverage in the media as compared to scientific literature. Front. Ecol. Evol. 5:175. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2017.00175

4. University of Exeter. (2018, April 13). Crowded urban areas have fewer songbirds per person. ScienceDaily. Retrieved  from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180413093836.htm

5. Dawson W et al (2017). Global hotspots and correlates of alien species richness across taxonomic groups. Nature Ecology and Evolution 1: 0186. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0186.