Spirit of Play Community School

Results of the DNA sequencing of your insect trap samples:

Number of specimens we tried to sequence for a DNA barcode:	285
Number of specimens successfully sequenced for a DNA barcode:	261
Number of different species based on the DNA barcodes:	119
Number of named species which we’ve identified using the DNA barcodes:	8
Number of species where we don’t know the name yet (this doesn’t necessarily mean they are new species, it just means that these species don’t have a reference DNA barcode available):	111

Here’s a short description of what DNA barcoding is from our friends at The Centre for Biodiversity Genomics if you need a refresher!

Of the 119 species you caught and that we DNA barcoded, 90 of them (76%) were not caught by any other schools during the project.

Of the 119 different species we DNA barcoded from your samples, 48% of them (57 species) were not represented on the Barcode of Life Database nor caught by other schools, which means they are completely new records for the Barcode of Life Database! This contribution is really important, as it helps build up the DNA barcode library of Australia’s insects. Many of these may be species that are new to science (undescribed/unnamed) but they may also be species that have a name, but have just not been DNA barcoded before. We’ll know more when we hear from the taxonomists!

Here are the images of all the specimens we tried to sequence a DNA barcode for:

Download the specimen images as a pdf file Download

Summary of the different arthropods we sequenced a DNA barcode for:

Download the data for this graph as an excel file Download

Species identified from your trap sample using DNA data

These identifications are made using DNA data, by matching the DNA sequences to the Barcode of Life Database (which contains sequences from all over the world!). This means we are relying on the identifications in that database being correct. Whilst most identifications are likely correct, it is possible that errors could exist, so we will manually confirm any suspicious identifications. This is a slow process and will happen over the next few months.

What does ‘OTU‘ mean? OTU stands for ‘operational taxonomic unit‘. It’s an approximation for a species. We don’t know for certain that each OTU is a different species, but until taxonomists are able to see all the specimens, OTUs are a great way to get a first look at the biodiversity!

Download all the species data for your school as an excel fileDownload

Download the species list as a pdf file Download

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