Publication Date
10-2-2024
Abstract
The world is undergoing a biodiversity crisis in which hundreds of species have gone extinct within the last few centuries, rivaling previous mass extinction events that have only occurred five times in the history of the planet. Anthropogenic stressors such as the climate crisis, over exploitation of natural resources, deforestation, and pollution have created and fostered a mass extinction event that is taking place in every corner of the planet. Endemic species, those that are hyper-specialized to specific environmental conditions are most at risk of going extinct. Endemism, therefore, is used as a tool for conservation and as an indicator of which areas of land should be prioritized to protect biodiversity and endemic species. The Llanganates-Sangay Ecological Corridor, in which this study took place is home to high rates of biodiversity and endemism, acting as a buffer zone for organisms to pass through between the protected areas. This corridor, which remains largely unprotected, is critical for the health of the ecosystems that exist in the region and the organisms that inhabit them. Through the use of high throughput sequencing techniques in the field, the project detailed here aimed to identify species new to science and catalog the biodiversity that exists within the region of study. In addition, methodology for sequencing in the field was revised and optimized for multiple gene regions across and within six taxa groups (frogs, snakes, tarantulas, pseudoscorpions, fungi, and velvet worms). Sixty-four new sequences were deposited in the National Institutes of Health BLAST, with a number of those representing putative novel species. The sequence data detailed here will provide the basis for further scientific inquiry and publications to describe the candidate new species. These findings will facilitate further research in the region as well as promote conservation of the corridor through the broadening of biodiversity and endemism metrics.
Recommended Citation
Boudreaux, Christian
(2024)
"In-Situ, High-Throughput DNA Sequencing and Methodology Refinement to Survey Biodiversity and Identify Candidate New Species to Science in a Largely Unprotected Biological Corridor in Ecuador,"
Venture: The University of Mississippi Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 6, Article 6.
Available at:
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/umurjournal/vol6/iss1/6
