BOLI Projects
BOLI participants invite you to learn more about their projects and to contact them with questions, comments, or a desire to join them!
The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) has launched the following major barcoding projects:- ABBI, the All Birds Barcoding Initiative, is a five-year campaign to obtain at least five barcode records representing each of the world’s 10,000 bird species. ABBI is led by an international Steering Committee and consists of Regional Working Groups.
- FISH-BOL, the Fish Barcode of Life campaign, is collecting barcodes from at least five specimens representing the 30,000+ species of marine, freshwater and estuarine fish of the world. Like ABBI, FISH-BOL has a central Steering Committee and Regional Working Groups.
- TBI, the Tephritid Barcode Initiative is a two-year “demonstration project” that will create an operational system for identifying fruit flies around the world. TBI will barcode at least five representatives of all tephritid fruit flies that are either (1) agricultural pests, (2) beneficial species used for biological control of other pests, (3) closely related to pests or beneficial species; and (4) representative species from other families of tephritids. TBI plans to obtain barcodes from approximately 2000 species of the estimated 4500 known tephritid species.
- MBI, the Mosquito Barcode Initiative is another “demonstration project” aimed at producing a global operational system for identifying mosquitoes in two years. MBI plans to barcode at least five specimens from 80% of the 3200 known mosquito species. Disease-bearing species and their closest relatives will be the highest priority.
- All-Leps, is a barcoding initiative on moths and butterflies. Two of the six All Leps campaigns are global in scope and focus on two families – the Sphingidae and Saturnidae. The other four campaigns are biotic surveys of all moths and butterflies that occur in specific geographic areas: North America; Australia; Area De Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in Costa Rica; and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the eastern U.S.
The Canadian Barcode of Life Network (BOLNET) has launched:
- The Canadian Biota project, a five-year initiative to barcode 10,000 Canadian species. The initiative is organized into a series of “campaigns” that focus on different taxonomic groups.
- PolarBol, the Canadian Arctic initiative, is an international collaboration aimed at barcoding the northern biota of Canada and other circumpolar countries. Intensive collecting and barcoding efforts to date have focused on the region around Churchill, Canada.
- CMarZ, the Census of Marine Zooplankton, is one of 14 field projects launched by the Census of Marine Life, a global effort to inventory the marine biota. CMarZ is producing an all-taxon inventory of marine zooplankton, a diverse assemblage of approximately 6800 species representing 15 different phyla. CMarZ was the first research project to produce DNA sequences in a ship-board laboratory.