TO ILLUMINATE BIODIVERSITY BY DEVELOPING GLOBALLY ACCESSIBLE, DNA-BASED SYSTEMS FOR THE DISCOVERY AND IDENTIFICATION OF ALL MULTICELLULAR LIFE.
This work has urgency if we are to effectively address biodiversity loss on our planet

BIOSCAN Germany

BIOSCAN Germany will greatly advance our understanding of biodiversity by addressing questions in three major fields of biodiversity research: species discovery, species dynamics and species interactions, in Germany, Europe and selected countries on other continents.

Species discovery: Complementation of the barcoding reference library

  • Germany: 300,000 barcodes, in particular “dark taxa” like Diptera and parasitoid Hymenoptera
  • Europe: 200,000 barcodes, with a focus on the Alps and southern Europe
  • High mountain systems
  • World: 100,000 barcodes, in collaboration with partners in other countries
BIOSCAN: Generate barcode coverage for 2M species

Species interactions – Innovative approaches combining metabarcoding and HTS sequencing

  • Parasitoids and biomes
  • Foodwebs, molecular prey identification, gut content analysis
BIOSCAN: Reveal species interactions by targeting the symbiome

Species dynamics: Assessing shifts in species distribution and abundance

  • Germany: biodiversity assessment at 1,000 sites
  • Europe: biodiversity assessment at 100 sites
  • World: biodiversity assessment at 10 sites in selected partner countries (e.g. Australia, Ethiopia, Colombia, Mali, Peru, South Africa, Vietnam)
BIOSCAN: Scan biological communities at 2,000 sites

BIOSCAN-Germany involves more than 200 partners and researchers in Germany.

Specimens (animals) in the global Barcode of Life Reference Library

  • Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (5,721,194)
  • Mined from GenBank, NCBI (1,495,353)
  • SNSB – Zoologische Staatssammlung München  (256,550)
  • University of Pennsylvania (209,622)
  • Canadian Natl Collection of Insects, Arachnids and Nematodes (191,168)
  • Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, Bernardino Rivadavia (162,360)
  • Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History (125,254)
  • Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (96,068)
  • 2694 Others (3,002,888)

Specimens (animals) in the global Barcode of Life Reference Library – German institutions only

  • SNSB, Zoologische Staatssammlung Muenchen (256,550)
  • Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig (66,725)
  • Deutsches Zentrum fuer Marine Biodiversitaetsforschung (8,506)
  • German Centre for Marine Biodiv. Res., Senckenberg am Meer (7,473)
  • Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut (7,133)
  • Staatliches Museum fur Naturkunde, Stuttgart (4,116)
  • Others (10,407)