Today only about 250,000 marine species have been described, with a underestimation of biodiversity at all levels. Identify every species is a...
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Today only about 250,000 marine species have been described, with a underestimation of biodiversity at all levels. Identify every species is a challenging job and the taxonomic approaches are not sufficient to complete the work. DNA Barcoding has recently been developed, a method that analyses a short sequence of mitochondrial DNA to identify taxa.
An innovative support for the study of marine biodiversity: to ascertain the true correspondence between unknown and known species, the genetic distance between populations, and to identify potential cryptic species.
The CBOL is an international consortium to create a universal barcode database that will enable scientists and common people to understand and to protect biodiversity. The Istituto Zooprofilattico of Genoa, through a research funded by the Ministry of Health, joins the FishBol, a subproject for fish identification.
Today we have collected, recorded and morphologically identified 100 fish samples in the Ligurian Sea, and we analyzed the DNA of 25 species. Sampling, identifying, and environment studying of specimens are among the first steps toward caring biodiversity. The aim is to draw a quali-quantitative profile of Mare Nostrum in terms of species diversity, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of actions of monitoring and environmental protection.
