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US-French research team to barcode an entire ecosystem
Date:12/7/2007

entific Research, or CNRS) and director of CRIOBE; Chris Meyer, research zoologist at the Smithsonian Institute; and Jean-Yves Meyer, botanist and research management officer with the Government of French Polynesia's Research Department.

The work will expand upon a 2005 pilot biocode project at Moorea, also funded by the Moore Foundation, which tested the feasibility of such a large undertaking. That project was limited to genetic barcoding of the fishes, geckos and selected insects.

In the spirit of leaving no stone unturned, larvae and contents of animals' guts will be fair game in the full project. "We'll check the gut contents of a gecko, spider or fish to find out what it's eating," said Chris Meyer, who managed the pilot project while he was a researcher at UC Berkeley. "This information will show how organisms fit together in the ecosystem, and because we will characterize every species on Moorea, we will be able to reconstruct the entire food web. With such a tool, ecologists in French Polynesia can pioneer a whole system approach to investigating how island food webs respond to disturbance, such as when invasive species enter the picture or sea temperatures rise."

There are an estimated 5,000 plant, animal and fungal species on Moorea, although that number may change as cryptic communities and organisms are sampled and genetic markers reveal novel species. "I'd be disappointed if we don't hit at least 10,000 species," said Meyer.

The number of species on the 51-square-mile island of Moorea is small compared with that on larger islands and continents. In California, for example, the number of insect species alone tops 30,000. Yet, the researchers say Moorea provides the right balance of being small enough to be studied manageably while being sufficiently complex to reliably serve as a microcosm of the challenges faced in larger ecosystems.

Charting the state of coral reefs off the island's coast, for example,
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Contact: Sarah Yang
scyang@berkeley.edu
510-643-7741
University of California - Berkeley  
Source:Eurekalert

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US-French research team to barcode an entire ecosystem
US-French research team to barcode an entire ecosystem
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